Robert Stermscheg's Blog

November 11th, the day we set aside for remembering those who've served in the Armed Forces, is always a special and somber day for me. Although I briefly served in the 'Reserves' years ago, it's nothing compared to those who've actually gone overseas and risked their lives for their country.
It doesn't take me long to reflect on my own father, who at nearly 95 years of age, still reminisces about his experiences. And that's when it hits me, that real heroes aren’t born or conjured up. They are often ordinary people just like you and I. The difference is that heroes rise up when faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges in the face of adversity. And what really defines a person is how he or she faces those challenges.
Yes, some choose to walk away, even cave in under pressure, but not my father. He isn’t a quitter; he’s an over-comer, and my hero.
When I first broached the idea of writing his life’s story, he looked at me quizzically to see if I was joking. I assured him I was not and proceeded to explain that his story would be an encouragement for many. What followed was a two year collaborative effort, where I came to know my father better. An unexpected bonus was that I came to see him in a different light, having the unique opportunity of getting to know him as a young man. I was fascinated and surprised at the same time. I learned about things that I had never heard of before, appreciating him as a young man, full of hopes and dreams for the future.
I'm just as proud of him today as I was when we embarked on the project.
My father is still my hero.POW #74324

I'd like to share with you a snippet from chapter four of Buried Secrets, the translation of Karl May's, The Hussar's Love series.
Here we find the protagonist, Richard von Lowenklau, exploring the grounds of Castle Ortry, when he runs into an unexpected visitor.

Somehow Richard felt drawn to accompany the secretive man. Who is he? he thought. What does he want? Is his presence connected to the secret goings on at the factory? It certainly seems that way. Perhaps he’ll be useful in clearing up the many questions I have yet to answer.
The stranger walked purposely away from the castle, out toward the meadow. After a while, he stopped at a low retaining wall and sat down on the ground, leaning up against the wall.
“Sit down,” he said, inviting Richard. “It’s more fitting to talk this way.”
The educator followed the man’s example, curious to discover what he wanted to discuss.
“Who are you?” asked the stranger.
“Why do you need to know?” Richard countered.
“I need to know for myself.”
“Perhaps you’ll find out, perhaps not. Who are you?”
“You’ll find out in due course,” evaded the stranger. “Since you don’t wish to reveal your identity, perhaps you’ll tell me what you do?”
“You’ll find out when I’m ready to disclose it,” replied Richard, unsure where this was going.
“But I already know.”
“Really? Tell me then.”
“You’re a man who chooses to enter other people’s rooms, taking what pleases him.”
So, the stranger supposed he was a scoundrel, even a thief? He must have seen him come down the lightning rod structure. Amused, Richard decided not to contradict his assessment. “Do you have something against that?”
“No,” replied the stranger. “You seem to be a bold man.”
“It goes with the territory,” laughed Richard.
“I appreciate courage and resolve in any man, but do you realize how much harm I could cause you?”
“Hmm, in what way?”
“I could detain you.”
“Damn! Would you really?”
“And turn you over to the master of the house.”
“You’re a cause for concern!”
“Don’t worry,” reassured the stranger in a conciliatory tone. “I have no intention of doing either, so long as you abide by my wishes.”
“If you’re prepared to keep quiet, you can count on me.”
“You catch on quick. Do you live nearby?”
“In the village of Ortry.”
“That’s good. Are you acquainted with the castle’s inhabitants?”
“More or less.”
“Are you familiar with the surrounding area, specifically the ruins called the Old Tower?”
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s reassuring. You strike me as a man who’s not too choosy in what he does, so long as it profits him. Are you interested in earning some money?”
Richard fought from laughing out loud. Instead, he replied evenly. “Gladly. I’m always in need of money.”
“Well, I’m prepared to offer you one hundred francs for three hours’ work.”
“Heavens! That’s a nice little sum.”
“Agreed, and I’m prepared to give you another hundred if you can supply a trustworthy man.”
“I’m sure I can,” Richard offered, intrigued. “Of course, I’ll need to know what you have in mind.”
“Fair enough,” the stranger said, pausing. “I want to unearth a grave.”
“A grave?” asked Richard, genuinely surprised. “In the church cemetery?”
“I’ll fill you in later. But first I want to know if you’re prepared to carry out the task and find another man to help you.”
“Yes,” Richard replied slowly. “I’m not at all concerned about opening a grave, and I’m sure I can find a helper who’s eager for a little paid adventure. But before I can give you my decision, I need to know which grave you have in mind.” Probably the body of a wealthy man, Richard speculated. Considering the stranger had taken him for a thief, it didn’t seem altogether unlikely he’d be after some plunder of his own.
“We were speaking of the Old Tower,” continued the stranger. “Have you ever been there?”
“Sure, many times.”
“Have you noticed that there’s a grave nearby?”
“Yes. I believe it’s a heathen’s grave.”
“Right. Do you know who’s buried there?”
“Of course, everyone does. The Baron de Sainte-Marie’s first wife.”
“Exactly. That’s the grave I want opened.”
Astounded, Richard half-rose from his sitting position. He hadn’t expected that. “Really? Do you suppose the baroness was buried with valuables?”
“No,” replied the man haltingly. “I’m interested in the baroness herself.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Richard, taken aback.
The stranger hesitated for a moment, no doubt debating how much he was prepared to reveal. “I want to take the baroness’ remains with me,” he replied solemnly.
The cavalry master was stunned. He looked across at the peculiar man, who had by now also risen from his sitting position. Who is this man? he thought. How is he connected to the dead lady that he would want to collect her remains? This chance meeting will prove advantageous for me if I make myself available to see where it leads. “So, you’re prepared to pay me two hundred francs if I agree to your proposal and supply another helper?”
“As soon as you’ve opened the coffin, you’ll receive the money. Are you willing?”
“Yes,” Richard said, extending his hand. “I’m interested.”
“Can I depend on you?”
“Completely. And on my friend as well, just like me. You won’t find two more discreet men anywhere.”
“That’s good. When would it suit you? Tomorrow night would be convenient for me.”
“All right.”
“Then come to the grave one hour before midnight, accompanied by your friend. I’ll be there waiting for you. Hold up your right hand and swear that you won’t betray me.”
It struck Richard that this was a significant encounter. After swearing his oath, he would be committed to carrying out the deed. It had once occurred to him to open the grave on his own, to find out if it was indeed empty or if it contained a corpse, which was why he consented to the stranger’s plan.
He lifted his hand and swore: “I swear in my name and on behalf of my companion that we won’t betray you, but help you carry out your plan and bring it to a successful conclusion.”
“Allah Akbar!” exclaimed the stranger. “That’s not the sentiment of a scoundrel or thief! I suppose that’s good enough to trust you with my true identity. My name is Abu Hassan, the magician. I’m in charge of a travelling group of acrobats who are scheduled to give a performance tomorrow in Thionville.”
“Why are you planning to remove the remains of the deceased baroness?”
“Perhaps I’ll fill you in once I’m convinced you’re truly trustworthy. Tell me your name and that of your friend.”
“You’ll find out our names once I’ve determined I can trust you in return. You can see from my cautious approach that I’m not careless with my associations. You can depend on me.”
Abu Hassan nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have something there. Then again, perhaps not. Still, I plan to be at the grave site at the appointed time. If you fail to show up, or worse, betray me, you will end up with a heavy sin on your conscience. Allah would surely punish you.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep my word. Take my hand and rest assured in my promise. Who will bring the shovels? You or I?”
“You. I’ll supply a box for the remains. I will assist you with digging, but you will have to place the bones in the box.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small pouch. “I will give you a hundred francs for now,” he said. “You’ll receive the other hundred once we’re finished.”
“Keep the hundred,” Richard said, pushing back the outstretched hand. “I’ll ask you for payment once I’ve fulfilled my part.”
“Allah il Allah!” said the man, surprised. “You are a trustworthy man, even though you’re a Christian and a scoundrel. I’m now convinced you won’t betray me. Good night.”
“Good night.”
The man jumped over the low wall and disappeared into the night. Richard stayed behind for a moment, captivated by this latest turn of events. Who would have thought such a thing? I, a German nobleman, a Prussian officer, find myself engaged by an itinerant magician to raid the grave of a former baroness. The whole thing is preposterous! Richard knew he could count on his trustworthy accomplice Franz to help him out in this unusual venture, and to procure the necessary implements without drawing unnecessary attention to himself.

A typical sign on Waikiki Beach. "Surf boards for rent". Boards, paddles, umbrellas, beach chairs, all for rent, lessons extra. The operator was doing brisk business.
But just around the corner was another sign, one that drew my attention:
"Stupid people shouldn't use smart phones."
Signs are intended to make a statement. For example, to convey information or instruction. Others are displays for advertising, typically offering some commodity or service. But this one was neither and implied the "advertiser" wished to convey a distinct message.
Seated, and with his back against a rock retaining wall along the busy strip on Kalakaua Avenue, Honolulu, a man was proudly displaying his sign, inviting -- no challenging -- people to stop and engage him in conversation.
I did just that. I stopped. But first, I need to describe him. Probably in his early to mid forties, his age difficult to assess because of age spots and psoriasis on his face. He was dressed in plain beige shorts, Hawaiian shirt and sandals. Nothing unusual about that, except that the shorts were dirty from constant wear and the shirt hadn't been washed in ages. His hair was disheveled and he hadn't shaved in a few days.
For all intent and purposes, he was a homeless man, as evidenced by the hat on the ground, inviting donations from passersby. He was one of the many homeless in the Waikiki area, claiming his own small piece of real estate from the former Hawaiian king, David Kalakaua, whose name adorned the street sign above his head.
I asked the man his name and surprisingly he willingly shared it: Mark. A common enough name. Mark seemed to be down on his luck, but at least he was inhabiting a portion of sidewalk that was neither cold nor inhospitable, judging from the coins in the hat.
I asked him about the cardboard sign and why he had penned it. Mark chuckled. "Well," he began, "I just like to watch people as they walk by; they make me laugh."
I smiled, encouraging him to continue.
"They cling to their cell phone, like they were holding a soother." He paused. "I see them stumble and trip, even banging into the lamp post," he explained, pointing to the one near him. "That's why I made my little sign."
It was my turn to grin. I didn't have my cell phone with me. I purposely had left it at home, deciding it wasn't worth bringing on my holiday. Okay, okay! Probably the real reason I didn't bring mine is because of the horrendous charges I'd be hit with from the American cell phone carriers. But I didn't tell Mark that.
Anyway, I asked him a few more questions. A few of his responses were hard to make out, either because of the constant traffic noise or because he had a slight speech impediment. Or maybe he just had too much to drink that day. Some he answered and some he didn't, like where he was actually from. (Many homeless people living in Hawaii weren't born on the islands.)
I asked him if he owned a smart phone. He grinned. "Not on your life."
As I walked away, I realized, that his life, such as it was, was, in some ways at least, carefree and that he didn't grip his phone like it was a precious commodity (like many of us do), because he didn't have one. Or rather, he chose not to have one.
Over the course of the next few days, I saw Mark a few times, always at the same location, talking to people as they walked by. Many chose to ignore him, but then the odd one, like me, will stop and actually talk to him.
I'm back in the frigid North, back on my home turf (frozen ground), while he's still there on Kalakaua Avenue, enjoying the warm gentle breezes and handouts from strangers. Oh well...

It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon. My wife, Toni, and I have just arrived at St. Joseph personal care home, where her 83 year old father, Emilio, now lives. Emilio is down the hall in room #138. He is sitting in his wheelchair, staring out the window. But he’s not really looking at anything.
“Hi, Dad,” my wife calls out to him. “How are you doing?”
Emilio slowly turns around to face the source of the interruption.
“Oh, hello,” he says quietly, not making eye contact. Emilio looks at his daughter but he’s not really sure who she is. Once uncomfortable at not being recognized, she’s quite used to it now and brushes it aside with, “Who am I, Dad?” while sitting down opposite him on the bed.
He looks at her, familiarity playing out in his expression but not to the point of recognition.
“I…I don’t know,” he admits truthfully.
She looks into his uncertain eyes as she picks up his hand. “Come on, Dad, I’m your daughter, Toneta,” using the shortened version of her Italian name, Antonietta.
I detect a slight smile on his lips, not sure it’s in response to her voice or the term of endearment. If it’s a good day, Emilio can distinguish Toneta from her sibling, Carmela. Only one year apart in age, the two sisters don’t look alike at all. But if he’s not having a banner day, he supposes she’s just another health-care aid that’s come to take him to the toilet.
A painter by profession and the patriarch of his family, Emilio was always active and one of those men that rarely sat still. Having only completed a grade six education in his native Italy, he found speaking his newly adopted tongue difficult enough and didn’t devote much time to learning how to read and write in English. He made up for it by working at extra jobs to provide for his family.
Weekends were spent at the family cottage on Lake Winnipeg, but even there, he wouldn’t relax and sit down. I’m still amazed at how hard he worked— splitting wood, then stacking it, and moving onto another project. He never wasted his time being idle.
As I watch my wife interact with her father, I witness the limited communication. It’s usually one-sided, mostly coming from Toneta. She’s patient, by now used to her father’s changes in mannerism—his changes in personality. One of these typically is memory loss.
If our visit comes during supper, Toneta takes the opportunity to feed him. After taking a few spoonful’s he looks at her and asks, “What about you? Aren’t you having any?” She smiles at him, his kind words a reminder of how he has always looked after his family, particularly at meal times.
One of the emotions we’ve often experienced while visiting him is sadness. That sadness comes from seeing a once vital man having given up his driver’s license in favor of moving around in a wheelchair. As he struggles with reduced mobility and a diminishing memory, different things become his priority, become his comfort. One of these is his room.
We like to wheel him from his small room and take him outside or to a spacious common area set aside for visiting families. But before we’ve had a chance to enjoy the already short visit, he becomes restless, wanting to be wheeled back to his room.
We all long to have the ‘old’ Emilio back, the father who shared with us stories about life in Italy, his military service, and his vast family connections back home. Now, unfortunately, the family that he interacts with most often are the patients in the care home, most of them also confined to wheelchairs and oblivious to his plight with dementia. Sadly, many struggle with the same disease. As he calls out to anyone that will listen with a succession of ‘hellos’, I wonder if there’s a part of him that still longs for fellowship, friendship, for the feeling of belonging.
We visit as often as we can, family members taking turns as our hectic schedules allow. We hope that the familiarity of a friendly face will rekindle a distant memory. And if our visit doesn’t, we take comfort in just being with him, reassuring him by our presence that he hasn’t been forgotten, that he matters to us all, that he always will. Emilio will always be remembered as the man who immigrated to Canada, hoping to fulfill his dreams of raising a family. I’m happy to say that he succeeded, and succeeded well.
I don’t want to dwell on what dementia is doing to him. I want to remember him as he was.
He will always be our dad.

Translation, it’s not an easy task. I’ve often been asked what it’s like to translate a work from one language to another, in this case from German into English. The short answer would be, hard work. But first, allow me to furnish a little background.
Having learned and studied English with all its idioms and exceptions, I embarked on a career as a police officer. There, I had plenty opportunity to write, but it was much later that I took a serious look at translation work. My reasoning was simple. I wanted to share some of the German books I had read with family and friends. But which would be easier? To teach them German, no easy feat, or to translate some of my favourite authors.
Alexandre Dumas’s works have been translated into English, so why not the works of Karl May, I reasoned. They were almost contemporaries, both having lived in the mid to late 1800s. So, after receiving encouragement from my wife, I embarked on my first project, translating one of Karl May’s novels into English. This in fact was a series, originally coined Die Liebe des Ulanen, which I rendered, The Hussar’s Love, to make it easier to identify with in North America.
Obviously what has helped me is that German was my first language. As a translator, you have to try to identify with the original author and his way of thinking and expressing himself. Unfortunately for me, Karl May died in 1912. There was no opportunity to consult with him. I would have to confine my thoughts and impressions to the works that have survived.
As I contemplated this translation project, I felt that I had the time and energy to do it justice, but I was surprised by its complexity. The challenge I faced was in remaining faithful to his original work while conveying the story in modern English. When you consider that much of this story takes place in Paris, where the characters spoke French (naturally!), this becomes all the more apparent. Also, Karl May’s novels, interspersed with French references, were penned in German over a century ago and contained a number of idioms largely unknown today.
I also discovered that there were a number of variations of his original work, Die Liebe des Ulanen. As I searched further, I realized that the four novels as we know them today (The Road to Waterloo, The Marabut's Secret, The Spy from Ortry, and The Gentlemen of Greifenklau) later stemmed from a series of Lieferungen, or consignments in a local newspaper, der Deutscher Wanderer. These 108 parts comprised what would later be known as the Münchmeyer Romane. They were sold by Karl May to the newspaper and appeared there on a regular basis, running from September 1883 to October 1885.
These stories, which May penned in a style of adventure and intrigue, were well-received by the general public. It’s interesting to note that May started his tale circa 1870, and introduced the reader to the central characters, spanning to the second and third generation. The setting was just prior to the Prussian-French War. He then abruptly takes us back to 1814, not in a flashback but in dramatic fashion, explaining how the conflict originated between two particular families. Particularly clever is the way in which May weaved two central and historical figures into the story, Napoleon Bonaparte and Field Marshal von Blücher. The inclusion of these larger than life men added an additional dimension to the plot, heightening the drama faced by the novel’s protagonist, Lieutenant von Löwenklau.
I chose my translation work by beginning at what would be the chronological starting point, the events taking place in 1814. Although I have perused the later, more commonly known abridged text made available in a four-part series by several European publishers, I have followed the original, unabridged version. Having said all that, it’s very important that the translated text makes sense to the modern, North-American reader. That’s where the fun really begins, converting a hundred-year old text into readable modern English. So, to answer the original question, a translator has to certainly be competent, mindful of what the original author wanted to convey, yet make the experience fresh and enjoyable.
An English professor whom I had consulted, gave me some wonderful advice. She stated that a good translation is one that isn’t disjointed or cumbersome, but has a flow of its own and doesn’t read like a translation. That is what I wanted to achieve. My readers will be the best judges of that, I trust.