Agreed on the corrections [to the "Notice" concerning the SI], which I will make to the proofs (I gave the text [to the printer] yesterday). The silence from Algeria, which is due to either the police or impertinence, is quite bad for "our network."
But one can do without another photo of soldiers.
Today the printer will send you a package of two hundred copies.[1]
The English translation of "Los Angeles" is nearly finished -- by the Englishman in Paris,[2] who is finally very good. Another potential translator -- American -- is in Toulouse. I will try to obtain from him the translation of another text; we thus approach the material for a pamphlet in English, when we find the occasion.
The English comrade says that the translation of the "Address" is fairly obscure, with faults and strange renderings, but is at an honorable level [nevertheless]: neither incoherent in expression, nor [an instance of] permanent barbarism.
We have finally adopted this title: The Decline and Fall of the Spectacular-Commodity Economy, because in English this evokes The Decline and Fall by Gibbon.[3] The idea being the end, the exit of political economy itself, which subsists as decadence, even though it increases production (by and in so far as "the spectacle").
Cordially yours,[1] Translator: two hundred copies of the "Address to the revolutionaries of Algeria and all countries," printed in five different languages: French, German, Spanish, English and Arabic.
[2] Translator: Donald Nicholson-Smith, who later joined the SI.
[3] Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 3, 1965-1968. Footnotes by Alice Debord, except where noted. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! August 2005.)