Is this translation correct ?
Today, I was reading an English translation of Herman Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" and saw the next sentence: "Knecht, of course, quickly imitated this circumspection and thereby remained at a remove from the industrious old man" While I can can grasp the meaning of the sentence, "remained at a remove" sounds a little bit unnatural, more like a poor translation rather than archaic(or very formal) English. Can someone enlighten me on this ?
Thanks!Later edit: After searching on google I found some 18.000 entries for "remained at a remove", many of them written in a very formal style. So I must assume that it is correct after all.

Question

Is this translation correct ?
Today, I was reading an English translation of Herman Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" and saw the next sentence: "Knecht, of course, quickly imitated this circumspection and thereby remained at a remove from the industrious old man" While I can can grasp the meaning of the sentence, "remained at a remove" sounds a little bit unnatural, more like a poor translation rather than archaic(or very formal) English. Can someone enlighten me on this ?
Thanks!Later edit: After searching on google I found some 18.000 entries for "remained at a remove", many of them written in a very formal style. So I must assume that it is correct after all.

Answer

I agree with you. It does sound awkward expression to me and I am a native speaker. Perhaps it is a bad translation, but I think that it means - he remained at a distance or remained remote from the old man.

Answers · 1

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