The Sound of the Machine

I read and listened to this autobiography. The audiobook only exists in English, and I read the German original. It’s an interesting, highly detailed account of Bartos’ life and will certainly entertain people who are interested in music in general, but of course, in the music of Kraftwerk in particular. The English translation is - quite frankly - not really that good. It is very stiff and sometimes awkward. Frequently it seems like Google translator was at work because idioms are not translated particularly well. For example, the German. “Sie machte mit mir Schluss” is translated as “she finished with me” instead of “she broke up with me”. This happens throughout the text, which is, of course, particularly bothersome for English native speakers. For me, it wasn’t a bigger problem because I had read the original German. However, I thought it was worth pointing out that the translation is quite weak. Other than that, some passages funeral, the repetitive and don’t really add anything to the larger narrative, so a bit more editing would have made the reading experience a little better.