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Politics : Ask Michael Burke

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To: Knighty Tin who wrote (107448)	4/18/2007 1:42:28 AM
From: S. maltophilia	Read Replies (1) of 132070

This month's Atlantic serendipitously republished a 1955 piece by Vonnegut: July 1955 Der Arme Dolmetscher by Kurt Vonnegut I was astonished one day in 1944, in the midst of front-line hell-raising, to learn that I had been made interpreter, Dolmetscher if you please, for a whole battalion, and was to be billeted in a Belgian burgomaster's house within artillery range of the Siegfried Line. It had never entered my head that I had what it took to dolmetsch. I qualified for the position while waiting to move from France into the front lines. While a student, I had learned the first stanza of Die Lorelei by rote from a college roommate, and I happened to give those lines a dogged rendition while working within earshot of the battalion commander. The colonel (a hotel detective from Mobile) asked his executive officer (a dry-goods salesman from Knoxville) in what language the lyrics were. The executive withheld judgment until I had bungled through Der Gipfel des Berges foo-unk-kelt im Abendsonnenschein. "Ah believes tha's Kraut, Cuhnel," he said.... theatlantic.com

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