That's a shame, I was looking forward to Boll's interpretation of the story. I guess that translating the slang into another language must be a particularly difficult task - I would be interested to see how it was achieved in the Japanese translation, because the Japanese don't actually have too many swear words. Salinger has seemed to take so much care about Japanese translations before that I wonder if he oversaw this one (or *any* of them for that matter). No, I don't speak German any more fluently than I did in Ninth Grade, which is the last time I studied it (: However I found it a particularly interesting language to study. being so close to English. Camille verona_beach@geocities.com @ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442 @ THE INVERTED FOREST http://www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest _________________________________________________________ hi camille 1. sorry everybody about the PS - my mistake 2. i teach english at a so-called "Gymnasium", mostly in advanced english courses, and that means the novel is read and discussed in english (students are about 18 years old). as for the german translation, it is - in spite of the fact that it was done by boell - a pretty poor one, mostly because he often doesnt hit holden's slang level adequately. I'll give you some examples next time (I'm sort of in a rush). do you, camille, speak german fluently, by the way? 3. as for boell himself, i do agree with you that he is a very good author, but I'm afraid I dont know the works you mentioned (i recommend Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, though). take care Bernie ----------