|Navlog|

Wilhelm Thalller’s Never Get Lost is an ironic tragedy: it is easily one of the best books on electronic navigation I have ever read but also one of the worst.

Thaller’s book was translated from the original German by someone he thanks in the introduction to the book. I laughed because instead, I would suggest a whipping. Hear that, Elisabeth Wagnleitner-Suppin? A sound thrashing.

Technically, the content is inspirational—wonderful illustrations with helpful markings to show how best and quickly to interpret the various instruments; repetition of principles ideas in various different ways that encourages sound understanding and the list goes on. Thaller’s assertion is that he would like for any reading pilots to able to immediately interpret and use the information presented by the instruments in much the same way an EKG is “read” by a doctor: meaning is extracted from seemingly incomprehensible data and the proper action taken.

However, the book is a terrible mishmash of bad grammar (abhorrent spelling, horrendous syntax, etc., etc.) and a near incomprehensible structure. With all these faults, this book is not the easiest to read and in fact, I’d proffer that it’s almost impossible. Almost.

When you can make some meaning out of what you’re reading, a descending clarity results. An “ah, so that’s what that is!” sort of clarity, but the amount of work one has to perform to get to this stage is immense and needlessly so hence the tragedy: for many English speakers, the concentrated amount of work needed to step over those metaphorical ‘road apples’ may deter them from getting to the real prize offered by this book.

In the hands of a more talented translator—preferably one who didn’t use on online language translator as this one seems to have—and a competent editor, this wonderful little book would easily be the best in class I personally have seen (and I’ve seen and read quite a lot). It makes me wish I could read the original German and may just be a good enough reason!