Author: * Aria Murasaka -
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Date: Jun 5, 2005 - 10:39
I'm mainly underlining the fact that it's not literal for people who aren't too familiar with German yet. Eirikr's translation is spot on, and if you know enough German to know what does the German word "man" means, you can skip directly to the end of this post. If not, well, let me try to explain it to you.
The German "man" doesn't have the same meaning as "man" in English, as in "male human being" (which would be, in German, "der Mann", with double "n" and always a capital "M"). "man" is a personal pronoun (indefinite third person singular) which has no equivalent in English (but one in French, "on"). It can be considered the equivalent of "they" in this exemple: "someone closed the window, and then they left" You can also translate a sentance man +verb by a passive in English.
Ok, so how would a literal translation of the sentence sound? I would go for the following:
There, where they burn books, they end up burning people too.
or
There where books are being burnt, people too will be burnt eventually
Oh come on, don't tell me no one knows who wrote this! One hint: it's one of the most important authors of the 19th century....
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