is intellectual baggage and writes a speech, eloquent and vulgar. Instead of saying that a man was arrested, they will say that his arrest took place. This predilection for substantives is a salient feature of Hitler’s style.Most of Hitler's stylistic peculiarities represent no problem for the translator. The mixed metaphors are just as mixed in one language as in the other. A lapse of grammatical logic can occur in any language. An English-language Hitler might be just as redundant as the German one; a half-educated writer, without clear ideas, generally feels that to say a thing only once is rather slight.There are, however, certain traits of Hitler's style that are peculiarly German and do present a problem in translation. Chief among these would be the length of the sentences, and the German particles.A translation must not necessarily be good English, but it must be English such as some sort of English author -in this case, let us say, a poor one -might write. On the other hand, it would be wrong to make Hitler an English-speaking rabble- rouser, because his very style is necessarily German.No non-German would write such labyrinthine sentences. The translator's task -often feet of tightrope-walking -is to render the ponderousness and even convey a German flavor, without writing German-American. In general I have cut down the sentences only when the length made them unintelligible in English. (The German language with its cases and genders does enable the reader to find his way through tangles which in a non-inflected language would be inextricable.) Contrary to the general opinion, the German text contains only one or two sentences that make no sense at first reading....
