Searching Finding Letting Go was originally written in Dutch. While working on this American English translation, I was surprised by the variety of styles in which I had written the sixty-eight texts.
I had not deliberately chosen those different styles. I wrote then as I still write today. Something catches my attention, and I try to give it words as faithfully as I can. I do not look back at how I wrote before, nor do I decide beforehand what style I should use. The form follows what wants to be expressed.
Looking back, this seems entirely appropriate to Searching Finding Letting Go. The book did not arise from a predetermined form. It developed through the act of searching, finding, and letting go. The differences in style are part of that process.
They did, however, make the translation more difficult. Some texts are narrative, others contemplative or mystical. Some use short, almost fragmentary sentences; others have a more flowing rhythm. Sometimes the language is direct and everyday; elsewhere it is symbolic and deliberately leaves meanings open.
A translation that made all these texts equally fluent and stylistically consistent would therefore change something essential. The differences had to remain. A fragmentary text was allowed to remain fragmentary in English. Ambiguities were preserved where possible rather than explained. And words that acquired a particular meaning within the book could not always be replaced by their most obvious English equivalents.
ChatGPT provided the American English translation in an ongoing dialogue with me. Again and again, we returned not only to what a Dutch word or sentence meant, but to what the text was trying to express. Sometimes this led to more natural English; at other times we deliberately stayed closer to the Dutch.
The purpose of the translation was not to give the sixty-eight texts a common style, but to give each of them the freedom to take its own form.
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