From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de)
Date: Sun Aug 29 1999 - 16:03:13 MDT
Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com> wrote:
> Just to satisfy my curiosity are all of the transhumanist documents
> in Sweeden in English?
Take a look at <URL:http://www.aleph.se/>. Actually, Aleph have
created a very nice transhumanist handbook, consisting partly of
texts translated from English, partly of original work in Swedish.
There has been some talk that De:Trans might do a German version,
after Aleph publish their updated edition.
I think I can state with a high degree of confidence that Aleph/STHF
are the most advanced of the national transhumanist associations
in Europe.
> What about the German efforts?
Well, I just got back from the first in-the-flesh gathering of
De:Trans (German Society for Transhumanism) we held this weekend.
All previous meetings, including the formal founding session, had
taken place on IRC.
At Extro 4 I decided not to give a presentation of De:Trans because
there was (and still is) little to report. After several months of
deliberations and struggling with red tape, the association has been
formally founded earlier this year. We're officially registered in
Berlin. The paperwork is mostly completed, there only remains some
wrestling with the authorities regarding our tax status.
Also, De:Trans now finally has an official web presence at
<URL:http://www.transhumanismus.de/>. There are plans to create
both a member-only and a public mailing list. So far, discussions
have been hosted on my general German language mailing list for
transhumanism, trans-de (at majordomo@lists.rhein-neckar.de).
There is a weekly IRC meeting, every Sunday at 21:00 CE(S)T, channel
#detrans on irc.fu-berlin.de, which tends to last for about an
hour. It has proven largely ineffective as a means of communication,
but it serves nicely to keep the social network alive.
Robert, you'll like hearing that one of De:Trans' pledged missions
is to translate key documents of transhuman interest into German.
A translation of the Extropian Principles is under final review,
and there is a first draft of a translation of the Transhumanist
FAQ.
It bears pointing out that translating is a difficult task. You
need both a reasonable understanding of the source language (foreign
language skills of the level acquired at school are usually not
adequate) and high proficiency in the target language. The documents
mentioned above pose the additional challenge that they are worded
exceptionally carefully in the original.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de
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