Congratulations are in order---it's quite a wonderful feeling, knowing others are reading your material by their own choice. Obviously there can be great merit just in putting something together for publication. Yet there can be far more to it in the form of satisfaction derived from efforts aiming to inform, educate, sway, and more.
A couple of nights ago, a new acquaintance handed me a paper to assess. In the privacy of my addled brain I read and re-read the piece. It was a one page translation in English, the original having been written in German. The focus was on J. S. Bach, noted Baroque composer. I was given to understand a friend of my acquaintance, also German, had written the item and handed it to the other for translation into English.
It is pure drivel. What may have been excellently presented in the urtext (form) is now anything but even remotely understandable. While I was able to figure things out in a fashion, I had to wonder why the piece was ever written as it presented nothing other than old information (about 300 years old!) and the pro-German slant was unmistakable. And it goes without saying that I'm unable to explain how it is that a person with poor English language skill would dare attempt a translation into English. One can only wonder what the intended audience might have been in the mind of the author or his colleague. I should point out that I'm a highly credentialed music theorist and hardly a stranger to Bach.
I commend you on getting your messages out there in print. It's quite an accomplishment.
