This essay introduces key issues relating to the translation of Sebald’s work into English and to his international reception in general. It shows how the reception of Sebald’s work in translation led to his canonization as “Holocaust author”, due in part to the sequence but also due to the tone of the translations. The essay discusses Sebald’s personal interest in translation practices and his heavy involvement in the English translations of his own work. It shows how Sebald might change the meaning in translated versions because of issues he identified with the German originals, and how his interventions and revisions impacted on his collaboration with the translators. In addition to the grammatical complexity of the German language, Sebald’s writing poses specific problems for the translator, such as the inclusion of very long sentences, regionalisms, unacknowledged citations, and a syntax and style partially modelled on nineteenth-century writers. The essay concludes with a discussion of untranslatability concerning Sebald’s use of troublesome vocabulary, such as the Nazi Jargon in Austerlitz or the offensive term ‘Neger’ (‘negro’) in The Emigrants.

Chapter 15 opens by asking readers to work through a complex language analysis problem, where the solution requires figuring out what the component parts mean and then making new sentences with those parts. This exercise introduces the notion of scaffolding, which goes beyond the advice that given information should precede new information. The progression from one type of information to the other will likely involve multiple steps, and attention to the order of each step should ideally be audience specific. The chapter encourages readers to describe their topics with as much technical apparatus as they want and then to break their descriptions down as much as possible. An example with vowel formants is introduced, emphasizing links back to problems with jargon and to the idea that incomplete is not incorrect. The Worked Example describes scaffolding in the formant example for the levels of explanation one might use for a young child, an older child, a teenager, a college student, and someone with expertise in a language-related field. Technical terms, materials (such as videos, spectrogram-making programs, or diagrams), and take-home messages are modified accordingly.

Chapter 14 opens by asking readers to produce several nouns to label an unusual object and then to describe their demonstration’s main activity in several ways. The chapter describes research with K-12 science classes showing learning boosts when concepts are taught before new terms for the concepts and that students are more interested when such terms are minimized. Jargon is the ultimate in new information, so spotting it is a critical first step toward clearer and more effective demonstrations. Strategies for jargon spotting are exemplified: words with Latin or Greek etymology (e.g., "pharyngeal"), acronyms (e.g., "SVO" for subject-verb-object), ambiguous words with both general and specialized meanings (e.g., "stress"). Many experts new to public engagement find it hard to avoid jargon. A demonstration on syntactic ambiguity shows that it can even be done with esoteric or abstract topics. Thus, while jargon is one of the tools of science, incomplete is not incorrect. The Worked Example discusses an online text editor’s markup of a draft sentence. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to aim such an editor to the written support for their demonstration.

Historically, language contact has taken place under conditions of trade, imported slave and contract labor, military service, conquest, colonialism, migration, and urbanization. The linguistic outcomes are determined in large part by the social relations among populations — including economic, political, and demographic factors — and by the duration of contact. In some times and places, interactions between linguistically heterogeneous groups have generated (depending on one’s theoretical orientation) new languages or radically different language varieties. This article examines the formation of contact languages — understood here primarily as pidgins, creoles, and bilingual mixed languages — the history of which involves a Germanic language in a significant way.

The final analytic chapter presents the ultimate example: Marie Jahoda, who embodied virtues that are praised in earlier chapters. She was the author of a classic study looking at the effects of mass unemployment the early 1930s. In her report she made telling use of examples to depict the lives of those whom she and her team studied. Just as her examples overspill any theory of unemployment, so the reasons why Jahoda sets an example overspill her abilities to use examples. She understood the tensions between theory and examples, coming down strongly on the side of the latter, recognizing the importance of ‘descriptive fieldwork’. She argued that psychologists were over-valuing theory. She wrote directly with minimum jargon and maximum clarity, believing in the importance of studying the lives of individuals. Jahoda’s use of examples and her suspicion of theory in psychology were just two aspects of a wider humane vision.