 |  |  |  |  |  |
This site is your source for English translations of original German manuals for guns,
machineguns, accessories, and even manuals for German reenactors. If you needed a
German manual but can't read German, you've come to the right place.
Original German weapon, field, training, and accessory manuals are tough to find,
expensive, and of course, written in German. With WWII and earlier manuals, they are
often written in the old style German. If you collect manuals, that's fine, but if you want or
need the operating and troubleshooting information, you've been out of luck unless you
read German and tracked down a 60+ year old book and found someone who could read
it.
67 English translations are now available for sale on my Manuals page. I'm currently
working on translating other manuals, and I still have many more waiting to be done. I
have manuals waiting ranging from a 1905 MG-08 Maxim manual to a 1936 Schwarzlose
operator's manual, plus some more manuals that will be of great interest to reenactors and
general history lovers. All will be translated as my time allows. I do have a full-time job,
so these things always take longer than they should.
The German language is difficult to translate because of the loose and multiple meanings of
many words. Accurate translations are usually only possible with the manual's subject
item available for inspection and disassembly. Members of the collector community have
been very supportive in lending or providing access to their guns and manuals so that I can
accurately complete the translations. Great care has been taken in providing the most
accurate and easy to understand translations, as well as the best quality graphics possible.
Most manuals are 5.5”W x 8.5” H, with a heavy paper cover (exceptions are noted).
These manuals are high quality, professionally printed on acid-free paper and not the usual
poor quality photocopied photocopies found on the web. I've bought a few of those, and
I was disappointed too.
These original manuals are the only source for the information they contain, are very rare,
and of course, written in German. Very often they're written in the Old German script
(see the link below). The thick collector books for some of these guns are great for
history, development, production statistics, and pictures of accessories, but lack useful
details or don't even mention the actual hands-on operation, training, and troubleshooting
for the guns themselves. If you've wanted an original "owner's manual" for your MG or
other German gun, or wanted to know the fine points of German army training, it is now
available in English.
Click on the Manuals link to see a listing of the available translations, and the Coming
button to see what's planned for the future. All prices include U.S. first class postage. If
you want more than 4 or so manuals, inquire about a postage discount. When the
package weighs more than 13 ounces, I may be able to sent it cheaper by using a priority
mail flat-rate box. Foreign orders are welcome, please email me for the cost of the
additional postage.
New manuals are always wanted. I'd especially like to find the manuals - HDv 181/1
through 5, but all other manuals will be considered. Let me know what you have. I don't
need to buy it, or even borrow it. It can be scanned and emailed to me, or as some
people have done, loaned and returned promptly after I scan it.
If you're looking for a German manual you don't see here, I may have it or know where I
can get it. Ask and I'll let you know what I can do. I've emailed scans of a few pages to
those in need of something I don't have translated yet, and found manuals for some very
rare pieces that aren't in demand enough to translate.
If you'd like to know about a manual for something in particular, send me an email with
your request. Email addresses will not be used for any other purpose, shared with
anyone, or made public.
To give you an idea of the amount of work involved in translating the old German Click
Here for a picture of an original page from an MG 08/15 manual. You'll understand why
these manuals take a ridiculous amount of time to complete.
The new DRILLS AND COMMANDS manual will be ready to
ship on April 24. See the Manuals page (at the bottom) for
details.
RPK Armorer's manual will be done by the middle of May. This
is the long barreled version of the AK47, and uses most of the
same parts. This RPK manual will also apply to may of the
problems with the AK47. This has 82 pages of diagrams with
specs for the parts.
An Explanation
It's Not Easy
These manuals have been translated the hard way, one word at a time by manual labor.
There is no computer program I've found which produces an accurate, or even
understandable translation for the old German. The results from a $400 translator
program are OK (barely) for modern German, but are incoherent when translating 60+
year old military books. I have 13 German/English military dictionaries, one German only
military dictionary, and two standard German/English dictionaries, all dated from 1925 to
1945, as well as a standard modern German/English general dictionary, and two sets of
English dictionaries (one old, one modern) to help determine the correct translation of the
text. I often have the actual gun or equipment sitting next to me for examination in order to
be sure that I choose the correct meaning from among the several different English
possibilities for translating the German word. The guns and equipment I don't have are
either loaned to me by other collectors, or I'm allowed access to them for examination and
disassembly. Sometimes I've had to translate the German to English, then look up the
English definition in an old English dictionary because the English word is not in common
use anymore and I want to be sure I get it right. It all takes a ridiculous amount of time.
This is not a "type it in and hit the Translate button" job. The words used for different
parts of the gun, and even the meanings of some of the words, have changed in the 60 to
100 years since these manuals were first published. Each word of the finished manual has
been translated and typed in, and each graphic has been scanned and usually enhanced,
touched up, or cleaned of the old "freckles" and crease-line flaws that have appeared
through the decades.
I do not speak German, nor do I write it. I have learned to read it, and read the old
German font so that I can translate these manuals. Speaking and reading/writing any
language are actually two separate things. Children learn to speak years before they learn
to read and write. I learned to read the old German first. Maybe some day I'll learn to
speak the language too.
Graphics Quality
Every effort has been made to keep the picture and diagram quality as high as possible,
but most of the original manuals were printed on low quality, rough surface paper which
wasn't intended to last for decades and certainly didn't preserve well. Some pictures were
poor quality to start with, and have steadily deteriorated since being published. The
pictures in the translated manuals in many cases have been improved from the originals,
but there is only so much that can be done with an original, poor quality picture. If a
picture isn't what it ought to be, the original was likely a lot worse. On some manuals, I've
spent more time working on the pictures than doing the actual translation, and I even have
a few manuals that I won't translate because the pictures are so bad they can't be
restored. When this happens and the manual is too good to abandon, I've scanned or
photographed original guns and parts to recompose the illustrations, or spent days with
Photoshop redrawing the graphics. Click here to see an example of a graphic from HDv
216/6 which I redrew because the original was so bad. Producing a quality product is
important to me, so I make every effort to reach that goal. You're not going to find a 3rd
generation copy of a bad photocopy in the manuals I've produced.
Printing
All manuals are printed on acid-free paper directly from the computer files by a high
resolution printer. Bulk printing from photographic plates or using a photocopier degrades
the quality (I tried), especially when the graphics were marginal to begin with. Those
methods are just copies of an original print, and can't be as good as the actual original.
Printing each page directly from the computer ensures that each page is the best it can be,
but the limiting factor is the original manual. Some manuals will have better quality
graphics than others because of the source material.
A Very Limited Market
These manuals fill a need in an extremely small market. If a fortune was waiting to be
made by translating and selling these manuals, someone else would have done it 50 years
ago. The expense to acquire the original manuals for translation is high because the
manuals are very collectible and more rare than the guns themselves. My most expensive
purchase of an original manual so far is $275. The manuals are very time consuming to
scan, translate, type in, reword, clean up and insert the graphics, and set up for printing.
Reading the old style German script just to determine the spelling is quite a task in itself. I
have 5 months of (spare time) work in the 1942 MG34 Butz manual alone, with several
others taking 3 months. As my experience has progressed in translating German, these
manuals are finished much faster than they used to be, but they are still very time
consuming to complete.
Printing a few thousand copies of each manual would certainly lower the price per manual,
but that's only if the copies would sell. The limited number of buyers for a particular
manual would mean a garage full of unsold copies, and each new manual completed would
result in a further investment that would take years or decades to recover. For example,
the question of how many MG26(t) (ZB-26) automatic rifles are out there, and how many
people will be interested in buying a manual for one, has an effect on the price of the
manual. If I work for 3 weeks and only sell 50 copies in 4 years, the price of course has
to reflect that. The ZB-26 is a fine gun, and I have completed a 1940-dated 48 page
manual, but I know that I can't afford to sell 60 hours of work for $8 a copy. Also, the
printing cost for 100 manuals is much higher per manual compared to the cost per manual
for printing a thousand or more. Buy a few hundred manuals and we can make a deal!
Pricing
You may notice I've reduced prices on some of the manuals. If I sell enough of a
particular manual, I can reduce the price as I recover some profit for my time and
expenses. The more I sell, the cheaper the cost to produce these manuals. Any business
has to make money to survive, but I'll try to keep the prices as reasonable as I can. The
more manuals I translate, the faster I get at it, which means I can sell the more recently
translated manuals cheaper. The initial cost of the original manual, weeks or months spent
translating (the older it is, the harder it is to translate), the number of pages, and if color
printing is involved, all determine the selling price. U.S. first class postage is included in
the price and I don't add "handling" charges to pad the cost. I always hated buying
something for $15 and having it cost $20 by the time I got it, so I don't run my business
that way. Let me know if you want several manuals. When I save time, postage, and gas
going to the post office, I can pass the savings on to you.
Please keep in mind that I'm not doing this because I have too much money and nothing to
do when I come home from my real job. By not copying the manuals for your buddies,
you help me to sell more, which means I can afford to buy and translate new manuals. I
promise you won't see me flying in to a machinegun shoot in a private helicopter.
Thanks Guys
Members of the collector community have been very encouraging and supportive in
lending manuals and allowing me to disassemble and examine some very expensive
hardware (such as the MKb and FG42). Their help is greatly appreciated, and keeps
these translations from being awkward and inaccurate. Some of the manuals have the
names of those who have allowed access to their collections or have loaned me their
original manuals, some from the U.S, and some from other countries. These guys should
be commended for their contributions to the gun collecting community. If you recognize
any of the names, be sure to tell them thanks for all of us when you see them. Without
their help, these manuals couldn't be as accurate as they are, some wouldn't have been
translated, and some I wouldn't even know about. I certainly appreciate their help, and
letting them know that others do too is good manners to say the least. They share their
collections in this way to advance the sport for the benefit of us all. That's first class
behavior. A long-time collector who has given me a great deal of support and full access
to his collection once told me that he didn't feel that his collection was his personal
property, it belonged to History. He just got to enjoy it for a while. Very nice.
As I've been translating a few non-gun manuals that are of special interest to military
historians and reenactors, I'm finding the same support as I've had with the gun
community. I can only wish I had started doing this a few years earlier.
Your Support is Appreciated
When I started translating these manuals, I wondered why nobody in the last 90 years had
translated any of them. Now I know why, it's hard, takes a ridiculous amount of time,
and will never make enough profit to be a full time job, but there are no other sources for
the information contained in these aging manuals. These are the original training, operating,
and maintenance manuals for these guns and accessories, and infantry instruction manuals
that were the primary sources of information for the German soldiers. This work needs
done before the old books turn to dust and are lost forever, or are hidden in collections
where they will never be seen by people who have an interest in the arms and training of
the German military of this turbulent time.
Your support is appreciated and allows me to continue the work.
To see how to place an order, click on the "Orders" link.
Contents of this page © 2008 by John Baum
machineguns, accessories, and even manuals for German reenactors. If you needed a
German manual but can't read German, you've come to the right place.
Original German weapon, field, training, and accessory manuals are tough to find,
expensive, and of course, written in German. With WWII and earlier manuals, they are
often written in the old style German. If you collect manuals, that's fine, but if you want or
need the operating and troubleshooting information, you've been out of luck unless you
read German and tracked down a 60+ year old book and found someone who could read
it.
67 English translations are now available for sale on my Manuals page. I'm currently
working on translating other manuals, and I still have many more waiting to be done. I
have manuals waiting ranging from a 1905 MG-08 Maxim manual to a 1936 Schwarzlose
operator's manual, plus some more manuals that will be of great interest to reenactors and
general history lovers. All will be translated as my time allows. I do have a full-time job,
so these things always take longer than they should.
The German language is difficult to translate because of the loose and multiple meanings of
many words. Accurate translations are usually only possible with the manual's subject
item available for inspection and disassembly. Members of the collector community have
been very supportive in lending or providing access to their guns and manuals so that I can
accurately complete the translations. Great care has been taken in providing the most
accurate and easy to understand translations, as well as the best quality graphics possible.
Most manuals are 5.5”W x 8.5” H, with a heavy paper cover (exceptions are noted).
These manuals are high quality, professionally printed on acid-free paper and not the usual
poor quality photocopied photocopies found on the web. I've bought a few of those, and
I was disappointed too.
These original manuals are the only source for the information they contain, are very rare,
and of course, written in German. Very often they're written in the Old German script
(see the link below). The thick collector books for some of these guns are great for
history, development, production statistics, and pictures of accessories, but lack useful
details or don't even mention the actual hands-on operation, training, and troubleshooting
for the guns themselves. If you've wanted an original "owner's manual" for your MG or
other German gun, or wanted to know the fine points of German army training, it is now
available in English.
Click on the Manuals link to see a listing of the available translations, and the Coming
button to see what's planned for the future. All prices include U.S. first class postage. If
you want more than 4 or so manuals, inquire about a postage discount. When the
package weighs more than 13 ounces, I may be able to sent it cheaper by using a priority
mail flat-rate box. Foreign orders are welcome, please email me for the cost of the
additional postage.
New manuals are always wanted. I'd especially like to find the manuals - HDv 181/1
through 5, but all other manuals will be considered. Let me know what you have. I don't
need to buy it, or even borrow it. It can be scanned and emailed to me, or as some
people have done, loaned and returned promptly after I scan it.
If you're looking for a German manual you don't see here, I may have it or know where I
can get it. Ask and I'll let you know what I can do. I've emailed scans of a few pages to
those in need of something I don't have translated yet, and found manuals for some very
rare pieces that aren't in demand enough to translate.
If you'd like to know about a manual for something in particular, send me an email with
your request. Email addresses will not be used for any other purpose, shared with
anyone, or made public.
To give you an idea of the amount of work involved in translating the old German Click
Here for a picture of an original page from an MG 08/15 manual. You'll understand why
these manuals take a ridiculous amount of time to complete.
The new DRILLS AND COMMANDS manual will be ready to
ship on April 24. See the Manuals page (at the bottom) for
details.
RPK Armorer's manual will be done by the middle of May. This
is the long barreled version of the AK47, and uses most of the
same parts. This RPK manual will also apply to may of the
problems with the AK47. This has 82 pages of diagrams with
specs for the parts.
An Explanation
It's Not Easy
These manuals have been translated the hard way, one word at a time by manual labor.
There is no computer program I've found which produces an accurate, or even
understandable translation for the old German. The results from a $400 translator
program are OK (barely) for modern German, but are incoherent when translating 60+
year old military books. I have 13 German/English military dictionaries, one German only
military dictionary, and two standard German/English dictionaries, all dated from 1925 to
1945, as well as a standard modern German/English general dictionary, and two sets of
English dictionaries (one old, one modern) to help determine the correct translation of the
text. I often have the actual gun or equipment sitting next to me for examination in order to
be sure that I choose the correct meaning from among the several different English
possibilities for translating the German word. The guns and equipment I don't have are
either loaned to me by other collectors, or I'm allowed access to them for examination and
disassembly. Sometimes I've had to translate the German to English, then look up the
English definition in an old English dictionary because the English word is not in common
use anymore and I want to be sure I get it right. It all takes a ridiculous amount of time.
This is not a "type it in and hit the Translate button" job. The words used for different
parts of the gun, and even the meanings of some of the words, have changed in the 60 to
100 years since these manuals were first published. Each word of the finished manual has
been translated and typed in, and each graphic has been scanned and usually enhanced,
touched up, or cleaned of the old "freckles" and crease-line flaws that have appeared
through the decades.
I do not speak German, nor do I write it. I have learned to read it, and read the old
German font so that I can translate these manuals. Speaking and reading/writing any
language are actually two separate things. Children learn to speak years before they learn
to read and write. I learned to read the old German first. Maybe some day I'll learn to
speak the language too.
Graphics Quality
Every effort has been made to keep the picture and diagram quality as high as possible,
but most of the original manuals were printed on low quality, rough surface paper which
wasn't intended to last for decades and certainly didn't preserve well. Some pictures were
poor quality to start with, and have steadily deteriorated since being published. The
pictures in the translated manuals in many cases have been improved from the originals,
but there is only so much that can be done with an original, poor quality picture. If a
picture isn't what it ought to be, the original was likely a lot worse. On some manuals, I've
spent more time working on the pictures than doing the actual translation, and I even have
a few manuals that I won't translate because the pictures are so bad they can't be
restored. When this happens and the manual is too good to abandon, I've scanned or
photographed original guns and parts to recompose the illustrations, or spent days with
Photoshop redrawing the graphics. Click here to see an example of a graphic from HDv
216/6 which I redrew because the original was so bad. Producing a quality product is
important to me, so I make every effort to reach that goal. You're not going to find a 3rd
generation copy of a bad photocopy in the manuals I've produced.
Printing
All manuals are printed on acid-free paper directly from the computer files by a high
resolution printer. Bulk printing from photographic plates or using a photocopier degrades
the quality (I tried), especially when the graphics were marginal to begin with. Those
methods are just copies of an original print, and can't be as good as the actual original.
Printing each page directly from the computer ensures that each page is the best it can be,
but the limiting factor is the original manual. Some manuals will have better quality
graphics than others because of the source material.
A Very Limited Market
These manuals fill a need in an extremely small market. If a fortune was waiting to be
made by translating and selling these manuals, someone else would have done it 50 years
ago. The expense to acquire the original manuals for translation is high because the
manuals are very collectible and more rare than the guns themselves. My most expensive
purchase of an original manual so far is $275. The manuals are very time consuming to
scan, translate, type in, reword, clean up and insert the graphics, and set up for printing.
Reading the old style German script just to determine the spelling is quite a task in itself. I
have 5 months of (spare time) work in the 1942 MG34 Butz manual alone, with several
others taking 3 months. As my experience has progressed in translating German, these
manuals are finished much faster than they used to be, but they are still very time
consuming to complete.
Printing a few thousand copies of each manual would certainly lower the price per manual,
but that's only if the copies would sell. The limited number of buyers for a particular
manual would mean a garage full of unsold copies, and each new manual completed would
result in a further investment that would take years or decades to recover. For example,
the question of how many MG26(t) (ZB-26) automatic rifles are out there, and how many
people will be interested in buying a manual for one, has an effect on the price of the
manual. If I work for 3 weeks and only sell 50 copies in 4 years, the price of course has
to reflect that. The ZB-26 is a fine gun, and I have completed a 1940-dated 48 page
manual, but I know that I can't afford to sell 60 hours of work for $8 a copy. Also, the
printing cost for 100 manuals is much higher per manual compared to the cost per manual
for printing a thousand or more. Buy a few hundred manuals and we can make a deal!
Pricing
You may notice I've reduced prices on some of the manuals. If I sell enough of a
particular manual, I can reduce the price as I recover some profit for my time and
expenses. The more I sell, the cheaper the cost to produce these manuals. Any business
has to make money to survive, but I'll try to keep the prices as reasonable as I can. The
more manuals I translate, the faster I get at it, which means I can sell the more recently
translated manuals cheaper. The initial cost of the original manual, weeks or months spent
translating (the older it is, the harder it is to translate), the number of pages, and if color
printing is involved, all determine the selling price. U.S. first class postage is included in
the price and I don't add "handling" charges to pad the cost. I always hated buying
something for $15 and having it cost $20 by the time I got it, so I don't run my business
that way. Let me know if you want several manuals. When I save time, postage, and gas
going to the post office, I can pass the savings on to you.
Please keep in mind that I'm not doing this because I have too much money and nothing to
do when I come home from my real job. By not copying the manuals for your buddies,
you help me to sell more, which means I can afford to buy and translate new manuals. I
promise you won't see me flying in to a machinegun shoot in a private helicopter.
Thanks Guys
Members of the collector community have been very encouraging and supportive in
lending manuals and allowing me to disassemble and examine some very expensive
hardware (such as the MKb and FG42). Their help is greatly appreciated, and keeps
these translations from being awkward and inaccurate. Some of the manuals have the
names of those who have allowed access to their collections or have loaned me their
original manuals, some from the U.S, and some from other countries. These guys should
be commended for their contributions to the gun collecting community. If you recognize
any of the names, be sure to tell them thanks for all of us when you see them. Without
their help, these manuals couldn't be as accurate as they are, some wouldn't have been
translated, and some I wouldn't even know about. I certainly appreciate their help, and
letting them know that others do too is good manners to say the least. They share their
collections in this way to advance the sport for the benefit of us all. That's first class
behavior. A long-time collector who has given me a great deal of support and full access
to his collection once told me that he didn't feel that his collection was his personal
property, it belonged to History. He just got to enjoy it for a while. Very nice.
As I've been translating a few non-gun manuals that are of special interest to military
historians and reenactors, I'm finding the same support as I've had with the gun
community. I can only wish I had started doing this a few years earlier.
Your Support is Appreciated
When I started translating these manuals, I wondered why nobody in the last 90 years had
translated any of them. Now I know why, it's hard, takes a ridiculous amount of time,
and will never make enough profit to be a full time job, but there are no other sources for
the information contained in these aging manuals. These are the original training, operating,
and maintenance manuals for these guns and accessories, and infantry instruction manuals
that were the primary sources of information for the German soldiers. This work needs
done before the old books turn to dust and are lost forever, or are hidden in collections
where they will never be seen by people who have an interest in the arms and training of
the German military of this turbulent time.
Your support is appreciated and allows me to continue the work.
To see how to place an order, click on the "Orders" link.
Contents of this page © 2008 by John Baum
 |
