SOURCE: “The Kafka Problem Compounded: Trial and “Judgment” in Modern Fiction Studies, 1977, pp. 511–29.

In the following essay, Hobson reviews incorrect translations of “The Judgment” and speculates on its effect on Kafka criticism.

Franz Kafka is no stranger to college-educated Americans. If they miss him in World Literature classes, they meet him in a psychology, philosophy, or religion course. Recently, literature-in-translation courses offered by foreign language departments have opened new avenues for Kafka into the curriculum and new markets for Kafka-in-translation texts. Witness a complete line of new and provocatively styled Kafka volumes produced by Schocken Books, which appeared on the shelves of paperback bookstores in 1974. It was the use of these editions in a Kafka-in-translation course which sparked the present undertaking. Since German is my native language, I prepared assignments in the original and then in the English text used by the class. When I first noticed discrepancies...