If you know French or German, please contribute a chapter to /leftypol/'s first crowdsourced translation project! This project started on
>>691.
The book is Karl Kautsky's history of the French Revolution, originally published as
Die Klassengegensätze im Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution in 1889. Coming from the "Pope of Marxism", as Kautsky was then known, this text likely had an immense influence on Lenin and other revolutionaries of his day. It was approved by Engels himself, and may have been foundational in establishing the Marxist theory of bourgeois revolution, yet it has never been translated into English. The original German is available here:
https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/kautsky/1908/frev/index.html and an old French translation is available here:
https://www.marxists.org/francais/kautsky/works/1889/00/antagonismes-table.htmWhat makes this work especially good for us to translate is that it's relatively short - just around 60 pages in total, divided into 10 chapters. With each chapter being 5-7 pages each, it is conceivable to translate a chapter in one day's volunteer work. Comrade Akko has already translated the preface, and is working on chapter 1. That leaves 9 chapters to complete:
Preface: Complete!
Chapter 1: Second draft complete (French)
Chapter 2: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading complete (English)
Chapter 3: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading in progress (English) - Proofreader needed
Chapter 4: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading complete (English)
Chapter 5: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading complete (English)
Chapter 6: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading in progress (English) - Proofreader needed
Chapter 7: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading in progress (English) - Proofreader needed
Chapter 8: Complete! (Copyrighted work, permission secured)
Chapter 9: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading in progress (English) - Proofreader needed
Chapter 10: Translator needed
If you don't speak French or German, you can still contribute! We need proofreaders for completed chapters, and historical experts to confirm / resolve contextual clues in the text.
If we are able to complete this project, it will be uploaded to marxists.org under /leftypol/'s name, and maybe win us some name recognition from the broader left in the process. We can do this!