 Describing the discovery of Mahler's heart condition, Alma speaks of the diagnosis of 'hereditary, although compensated, valve defects on both sides'.Creighton's English translation (along with all the commentaries that derive from it) omits the reference to the defects being 'compensated'.Faced with this and other problematic translations, Peter Franklin has been moved to ask whether there might not be 'a special, English readers' Mahler, idiosyncratically marked and defined by textual tradition'.