Comparison of the Polish and German Versions

The Polish and German versions of Tarski’s paper are uncannily similar, down to the choice of metaphors. Within this basic similarity, there are differences. We found 17 misprints in the German version, but none in the Polish version. We identified 22 substantive differences. Of these, seven appear to date from when the papers were first written, five appear to be revisions of the German version that were not made to the Polish version, and 10 appear to be revisions of the Polish version not made to the German version. Since all but two of the apparent revisions to the German version occur at the beginning of the paper and all the apparent revisions in the Polish version occur later in the paper, we speculate that Tarski began reworking the paper’s German version for publication in the conference proceedings, sent it off to meet a deadline before completing the task, and made the rest of the revisions in the Polish version.