On 12/8/24 10:53 AM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
Even with the first sentence, the book is a puzzle. "One morning,
when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself
transformed in his bed into a ..." what? "Horrible vermin"? "... monstrous verminous bug"? "monstrous vermin"? "... monstrous cockroach"? "... beetle"? "... giant insect"? (David Wyllie, Ian Johnston, Stanley Corngold (and Google), Michael Hofmann, Vladimir
Nabokov, and unknown, respectively)
The original German is "ungeheuren Ungeziefer", which is no help,
because "Ungeziefer" is not a strictly defined entomological term.
I'm not a native German speaker, but "monstrous vermin" seems closest to
me. Definitely not anything that suggests a particular species.
--
Gary McGath
http://www.mcgath.com
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)