Common-free-hood

In the course of tracking down a nature poem from Friederike "the Silesian Swan" Kempner for rollick, I came across this Collection of in common-free poems. Looks like some trusting soul simply ran the originals through a translation programme and posted them without the most rudimentary editing. Naturally, it choked on any spelling which was the least bit unconventional, leading to such fluid lines of verse as "The blooms give away / With grossmuet'gem view" and "Learn and woellen erfahrn".

But what I love most about the translations is not the overliteral rendering of common nouns (e.g. the beautiful example in the title: "common-free" = gemeinfrei "in the public domain"), but the overliteral rendering of proper nouns. Thus, Charlotte von Ahlefeld becomes "Charlotte of awl field", Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock now has "God-dear" for a middle name, and god only knows which 17th-century bard has become "Theobald squat".

snowy_owlet should bookmark this for her German-learning efforts. After all, if she can learn to speak English like this, she's already halfway there!