Andreas, Thank you for this enlightening post! It struck me that you as the translator have the same misgivings that I did when I reviewed the book when it first came out. A few years ago, I had a number of dealings with Boschinsky (Europe's foremost publisher of technical books on musical instruments, among other fields). When the book was newly printed, they sent me a copy to review. After studying the book I spent a few hours on the phone with the then department head responsible for musical instrument publications. I told him I was truly saddened by what I found. Saddened because of the lost/wasted opportunity that this book represented. Instead of a book for the 21st century, I found, as you outline below, outdated repair methods and all kinds of other errors. There was no sign of any research of any other current ideas or methods in use, especially not at the cutting edge in America or Europe or Japan. There was obviously no peer review, and very little editing. (I am being generous here.) Bochinsky probably won't publish another book on piano technology for many years - it is very expensive and difficult to make a profit on the small print runs. This is a shame, because our craft is moving forward all the time, and with all due respect, a lot of what the old guys did in the 1960s, 70s and 80s is now passé. We know a lot more and can do much better work, and yet books such as this perpetuate the old stuff. Jurgen Goering Piano Forte www.pianofortesupply.com On Mon Jan 23 at 9:30 AM, Andreas Risberg wrote: > Good day, > > I remember reading recommendations on literature a few weeks back and I think I have the right to warn everybody about 'Upright and Grand Piano Repair' by Carl-Johan Forss, since I translated the book. > > This is me defending a job I was always unhappy with, but I've wanted to get this off my chest for a few years. Don't read unless you have nothing better to do! I apologize in advance for the negativity. > The norwegian original is full of factual errors and misconceptions, the english translation quite a bit less so. The translation itself is sloppy and hasty, I had to spend the majority of the time double-checking every fact, figuring out what generic product might be the equivalent of a nongeneric product referred to, or simply trying to understand what the author intended to write. Rather than putting beautiful sentences together. I wouldn't even call it a translation. A revision, perhaps. The whole time the people at Edition Bochinsky were trying to rush me to work faster and faster even though they knew i was working close to 19 hours a day, every day of the week for three months. "We have to have the book finished and printed before MusikMesse in Frankfurt!" The heavy use of 'shift' instead of 'replace' in the book came from an elderly very nice NY piano technician whom I heard at a lecture in Sweden. He used the word often and when I asked him afterwards he simply said that "you shift the tires on your car rather than you replace the tires". When I discovered towards the end of the translation that I had misunderstood the way he used the term, the publisher wasn't interested in letting me do a second run through to correct or improve the language. "Only misspelling, any rewriting might affect the layout and that would delay the book!" > The book tries to cover everything and I think isn't detailed or close up enough. Every part of the book needs complementary literature or the guide of a good teacher, someone who can spot what is missing and fill in. An experienced teacher who is confident enough to say that "this fact is wrong" or that "this isn't the best way to do this." The book is full of solutions and methods that I was trained to use when I studied for Mr. Forss. Many of these practices I today find awkward and backwards and don't use anymore. > The book might work as skeleton or a framework for what one needs to know. I would only recommend the book to a person bent on collecting technical literature but prepared to buy several books on the same topic/topics. > Edition Bochinsky, PPV Medien and their staff were unsympathetic and unpleasant to have to do with and I ended our collaboration after they tried to make me sign a slave contract for a second book even worse than the contract for the first book. Ca 4 USD per hour. :P I have no regrets speaking my mind. I'm sorry that they're often the best alternative if you want to buy serious technical literature. > Andreas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20120123/9e8a5ca1/attachment.htm>
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