About Translations, Transliteration and References
Varga used to write or dictate his papers in German, his intellectual language. Apart from Hungarian, his knowledge of other languages was rather basic. In Moscow he was allowed to listen to the BBC broadcasting in German. Most of his writings were published in the Comintern languages (Russian, German, French, English and Spanish). However, because of the weakness of the Communist parties of Great Britain and the United States, not all publications were translated into English. Hence, several Varga texts had to be translated from German into English. Apart from the German, ‘original’ Russian, French and sometimes Spanish translations were also used. The Comintern translators sometimes made their own interpretations of the texts they translated.
American and British editions of Varga’s writings also circulated. These editions were used for this selection as well. The spelling and word use had to be actualised according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Hence, ‘to-day’ has become ‘today’. American proper nouns and book titles have remained unchanged: American Federation of Labor or Department of Defense. Russian names and titles were transliterated according to the rules of the Library of Congress, but without adding soft and hard signs. For the same reason typical American words in Varga’s American publications have been replaced by their British equivalents. But in quotations from American publications they were retained. Original Polish names kept their original spelling in cases where the person in question was a native Pole having also been active in Polish politics.
References in Varga’s texts were checked as far as possible. Varga did not really care about the exactness of his references and quotations. He also used the most disparate sources and in addition he easily mixed them with official data. Sometimes Varga refers to newspaper articles which could not always be retraced in the issues indicated. In the latter case this is always mentioned in an editor’s footnote.
Chapter references in Varga’s texts are part of the original work and refer to chapters in the original work (which have been turned into sections in this collected volume). However, since these are archival texts we decided to preserve the original language.