Alexander Gode

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Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von-Aesch or simply Alexander Gode (October 30, 1906 in Bremen - August 10, 1970 in Mount Kisco, New York) was a German-American linguist, translator and the driving force behind the creation of the auxiliary language Interlingua.

Alexander Gode

Born to a German father and a Swiss mother, Gode studied at the University of Vienna and the University of Paris before leaving for the U.S. and becoming a citizen in 1927. He was an instructor at the University of Chicago as well as Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in Germanic Studies in 1939.

Gode was involved with the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) from 1933 on, sporadically at first. In 1936 the IALA began development on a new international auxiliary language and in 1939 Gode was hired to assist in this work.

After André Martinet was brought in to head the research in 1946, the two men's views would come into conflict as Gode thought that Martinet was trying to schematize the new language too much, conflating it with Occidental. Gode was not interested in inventing a language, as a product of some a-priori design; instead, he and the former director of research, Ezra Clark Stillman, wanted to register the "international vocabulary" as they saw it already existing; this was to be done (and was already being done before Martinet) by systematically extracting and modifying the words from the existing control languages in such a way that they could be seen as dialects of a common language, with their own specific peculiarities. When Martinet resigned in 1948 over a salary dispute, Gode took up leadership and got full reign in implementing this vision. The result was Interlingua, the dictionary and grammar of which were published in 1951.

In 1953, the role of IALA was assumed by the Interlingua Division of Science Service, and Gode became the division director. He would continue his involvement with Interlingua until his death by translating scientific and medical texts to Interlingua. He won awards for this from the American Medical Writers Association and the International Federation of Translators. He was one of the founders and first president of the American Translators Association (1960-1963). In his honor, this organization awards the Alexander Gode Medal "for outstanding service to the translation and interpreting professions".

Alexander Gode died of cancer in hospital. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Johanna. Dr Gode is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, his second wife Alison, and their two children.

[edit] Works

Natural Science in German Romanticism (1941)
Spanish at Sight (with Ezra Clark Stillman, 1943)
Portuguese at Sight (1943)
French at Sight (1945)
Interlingua-English Dictionary (as editor-in-chief, 1951)
Interlingua Grammar (with Hugh Edward Blair, 1951)
Paul Klee (as translator, written by Carola Giedion-Welcker, 1952)
Interlingua a Prime Vista (1954)
Homo Sonetticus Moorensis (1955)
Dece contos (1958)
On the Origin of Language (with John H Moran, 1966)
The Case Against Bertolt Brecht (as translator, written by Gerhard Szczesny, 1969)
Anthology of German Poetry Through the 19th Century - In English Translations with the German Originals (1972)