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Wortgebilde

English translation: verbal constructions

GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)
German term or phrase:Wortgebilde
English translation:verbal constructions
Entered by: monbuckland

20:50 Aug 22, 2008
German to English translations [PRO]
Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature
German term or phrase: Wortgebilde
This is from a text about the works of Ernst Jandl:
"Jandls Gedichte fordern, stampfen, klingen, singen. Lautgedichte lassen emotionale Landschaften entstehen, Wortkaskaden werden zu Musik und skurrile Wortgebilde verdichten sich zu besonderen Perspektiven."
monbuckland
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:16
verbal constructions
Explanation:
There are also resonances with the poet's contemporaries in France, such as the rhetorical positioning of questions, pauses, and statements one hears in Philippe Beck's Dernière mode familiale (Flammarion, 2000), or the momentum of repeating verbal constructions that elegantly subsumes the (anti)aesthetic power of proper names and referents in Pierre Alferi's Kub Or (P.O.L., 1994).

http://www.doublechange.com/issue4/wiener-eng.htm


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Note added at 23 mins (2008-08-22 21:13:50 GMT)
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Emily Dickinson
Like Emerson, she holds that beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one. Little that she wrote seemed conventional: her choice of words, her verbal constructions, even her spelling. Her poetry abounds in telling images. A salient feature of her technique was a severe economy of expression. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainest words.
http://xibu.tjfsu.edu.cn/elearning/en/en_01/w_ed/intro.htm

Sá-Carneiro’s poetry, written in Paris, expresses the crisis of a personality inadequate to its own intense feelings; it perhaps hints at the reasons for his suicide in 1916. His Dispersão (1914; “Dispersion”) features exuberant images, an obsession with verbal constructions and metaphors, and experimentation with graphic design and fonts.
http://www.britannica.com
Selected response from:

Kim Metzger
Mexico
Local time: 16:16
Grading comment
Thanks to all who contributed. I like "verbal imagery" and would have used it in another context. But I think here the "Gebilde" are really the constructions.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



Summary of answers provided
4 +5verbal images, verbal imagery
Beth Jones
4 +4word creations
swisstell
4 +3verbal constructions
Kim Metzger
4 +1verbal artifacts
Dorothea Rose
3information
Bernhard Sulzer


  

Answers


9 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +4
word creations


Explanation:
word figures

swisstell
Italy
Local time: 00:16
Works in field
Native speaker of: German
PRO pts in category: 20

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Eike Seemann DipTrans: use of 'skurril' and general context, other key words: 'entstehen', 'Wortkaskaden', etc./ a simple, straightforward solution / not sure about 'word figures', though
12 hrs
  -> thank you
agree  fm1: word formation, creation of new words (e.g, stirnscheitelunterschwang, männchenmeere, gottelbock)
13 hrs
  -> thank you
agree  Ulrike Kraemer: verbal creations?
13 hrs
  -> thanks, yes why not
agree  Harald Moelzer (medical-translator)
3 days 19 hrs
  -> vielen Dank, Harald.
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11 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +3
verbal constructions


Explanation:
There are also resonances with the poet's contemporaries in France, such as the rhetorical positioning of questions, pauses, and statements one hears in Philippe Beck's Dernière mode familiale (Flammarion, 2000), or the momentum of repeating verbal constructions that elegantly subsumes the (anti)aesthetic power of proper names and referents in Pierre Alferi's Kub Or (P.O.L., 1994).

http://www.doublechange.com/issue4/wiener-eng.htm


--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 23 mins (2008-08-22 21:13:50 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Emily Dickinson
Like Emerson, she holds that beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one. Little that she wrote seemed conventional: her choice of words, her verbal constructions, even her spelling. Her poetry abounds in telling images. A salient feature of her technique was a severe economy of expression. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainest words.
http://xibu.tjfsu.edu.cn/elearning/en/en_01/w_ed/intro.htm

Sá-Carneiro’s poetry, written in Paris, expresses the crisis of a personality inadequate to its own intense feelings; it perhaps hints at the reasons for his suicide in 1916. His Dispersão (1914; “Dispersion”) features exuberant images, an obsession with verbal constructions and metaphors, and experimentation with graphic design and fonts.
http://www.britannica.com


Kim Metzger
Mexico
Local time: 16:16
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 213
Grading comment
Thanks to all who contributed. I like "verbal imagery" and would have used it in another context. But I think here the "Gebilde" are really the constructions.

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Jo Bennett: Yes, "constructions" continues the activity of "entstehen" and "-kaskaden".
12 hrs
agree  Eike Seemann DipTrans: interesting comparison with Dickinson in your second link
13 hrs
agree  Ulrike Kraemer
13 hrs
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28 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +5
verbal images, verbal imagery


Explanation:
Here's another option for you. HTH,
BJ

Beth Jones
Austria
Local time: 00:16
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 4

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Helen Shiner: This would be my choice.
7 mins
agree  Kim Metzger: And a good option, too. But in poetry you don't really need "verbal." Just imagery would be fine.
9 mins
agree  EC Translate
45 mins
agree  David Hollywood: "verbal images" is super :)
1 hr
agree  KARIN ISBELL
4 hrs
neutral  Diana Loos: IMO this contradicts the meaning of the word in the context of the sentence: "Wortgebilde" is referring not to the sense but to the construction, as is obvious in the rest of the sentence (Perspektiven). I find Kim's suggestion much more appropriate.
10 hrs
disagree  Eike Seemann DipTrans: with Diana, but IMO Swiss's first suggestion is the most appropriate one so far
11 hrs
agree  Harald Moelzer (medical-translator)
3 days 18 hrs
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16 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 3/5Answerer confidence 3/5
information


Explanation:
the word "Gebilde" refers to unusual form(ation) of the word(s), different from the process of creating them.

Unusual word-"forms/formations" can lean towards the visual but also the aural plane, as for example Jandl's version of the Schützengraben: schtzngrmm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Jandl

Configurations of sounds/of words would be another way to see this:
http://www.beaugrande.com/Intro1981Seven.htm
Yet another way to phrase it maybe: word-constructs.

Although much of a "Wortgebilde" can be understood as having a "verbal (spoken/aural) characteristic" - to me the word "verbal" limits the range of the word-constructs Jandl built (especially regarding his concrete poetry) and doesn't do the term "Wortgebilde" justice.

Terms such as formation, fabrication, composition imply both, the process of creating as well as the result as well as some other meanings which the German "Wortgebilde" really does not (IMO).

word-structure (as "Wortgefüge") is possible, but word-construction again also implies the process.




Bernhard Sulzer
United States
Local time: 18:16
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: German
PRO pts in category: 55

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  Eike Seemann DipTrans: 'word structure' and 'formation' would be misleading(specific terms in linguistics);'Gebilde' is about the process,no?;'fabrication' is ok IMO,if a little 'denglish';'information' I don't get at all;'composition'would imply a combination of several words
45 mins
  -> note the hyphens between word and structure/formation; my entry is meant as additional "information" or comment, thus "titled" information.
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18 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
verbal artifacts


Explanation:
Bisher fand ich SwissTells Antwort am passendsten. Der Begriff "creation" beinhaltet sowohl die Entstehung als auch das Endergebnis. Das liest sich aus einem Gebilde auch heraus. Wunderschön die von fm1 genannten Beispiele der Jandlschen Wortschöpfungen (was als deutsches Wort wieder zu den ***word creations*** von SwissTell hinführt. Ich könnte mich allerdings auch mit den ***verbal artifacts*** anfreunden, würde schon wegen nicht so häufigen Gebrauchs ganz gut zu Jandl passen...

Ich glaub' ich muss jetzt meine Jandl-Bücher rausholen... :)



Example sentence(s):
  • Walser is many things: a Paul Klee in words, maker of droll, whimsical, tender, and heartbreaking verbal artifacts; an inspiration to such very different writers as Kafka and W.G. Sebald; an amalgam, as Susan Sontag suggests in her preface to this volume,

    Reference: http://www.powells.com/biblio/0940322986
Dorothea Rose
Local time: 00:16
Native speaker of: Native in GermanGerman

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Eike Seemann DipTrans
1 hr
  -> Thanks! :)
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