The latest addition to the AAUGH.com reference library is Liebe ist ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln, which is the 1967 German translation of the pictures-and-aphorism book Love is Walking Hand in Hand.

Actually, “translation” is taking it too far. My German is pretty bad, but even I noticed that the text in the German doesn’t seem to match the English. Spending some time with translation tools confirms that; in many cases, they just seem to have made up a different aphorism to go with the image. So where the American edition says “Love is making fudge together”, the German says “Liebe ist – der beste Koch” (“Love is – the best cook.”) They’re not always that different; “Love is a phone call” becomes “Love is the hoped-for call”. Still, one wonders whether the differences were to adjust for some cultural difference, if the translator thought he had something better, or if someone just didn’t have that good a grasp of English and didn’t bother.

I still haven’t been able to parse the title; mechanical translation tells me that it’s Love is a Book with Seven Seals, and I can’t tell you what that means.

Cartoonist Howard Cruise has some thoughts about the formatting of Peanuts in his local paper (The Berkshire Eagle, which used to be my local paper when I was in college) over at this blog.

Share the news!