Hi Hans
I agree with your comments on the whole - that translation was rather literal.
schmeissen - I get fling/toss/chuck/throw/jolt - I'm not sure whether there is a difference between a toss and a throw? Aren't fling/toss/chuck just slang terms for throw? I only settled for throw as it I thought it would be better understood cross-cultures and less ambiguous.
wenn - I agree should be 'when' not 'if' in this case
fällt - falls/drops - there are obviously reasons/places where we would choose one over the other but I'm not sure we can make a distinction here or that it makes any difference in this case?
schnellen - I agree that it refers to a fast acceleration of one object by another - shoots seemed like a good choice to me as we also have the adverb 'hoch' to consider telling us it's going up, and over here we would say that something rapidly rising is 'shooting up' - 'shoots' doesn't necessarily have anything to do with guns etc. Interestingly, my old 1800s German-English dictionary lists only 'to spring', 'to fillip' and 'to fling away' under the verb schnellen - 'fillip' means to flick, like you would flick with your thumb and forefinger.
hoch - yes it means up/upwards here and I've talked about this before in other posts, such as...
http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... 5930#45930
Also, looking up 'hochschnellen' I found: to shoot up, to soar, to jolt up, to spring up, to flip up
As I mentioned in the post at the link above, I think the important thing to understand is that the rising motion is being described in two places as being rapid, and therefore the original translation in John's book that simply says 'rise' can be improved in this way. Also, the part about ounces should be corrected as described and brings a completely different meaning that makes more sense, as discussed here on many occasions.
It's good to now have your confirmation that Rainer's and my translation is correct, so many thanks for posting.
All the best
Stewart