Giant Bug or Monstrous Vermin? Translating Kafka's Die Verwandlung in its Cultural, Social, and Biological Contexts

Abstract

Since it would have been feasible for Kafka to call his story ‘Die Metamorphose’, the article first considers why most translators render Die Verwandlung as (The) Metamorphosis and not literally as The Transformation. Given the widespread impact of Darwinism and Social Darwinism when Kafka wrote the work in 1912, particular attention is paid to socio-biological factors that may have influenced his choice of title. The article further considers the possible impact of Yiddish theatre and Nietzschean philosophy upon Kafka's decision. It then examines how translators have tackled the story's opening sentence, given the difficulties of rendering the phrase ‘ungeheures Ungeziefer’ (literally ‘monstrous vermin’) in a way that does justice to the sentence's original structure and vocabulary. Finally, the article offers a possible solution to this problem.