"not" => "nor"

By the way: This is _not_ a quote by Charles Darwin, although a paraphrase of his writings. (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wi...win#Misquoted)

(Oh I see and hear now, that this sentence's audio is already recorded, so perhaps my suggestion for change is not that important to record it again. I think the sentence is fine like this too.)

It would be better with "nor", however...

I have added a version with "nor" as an alternative transaltion.

It would not be "better" with nor. It would just convey a different kind of rhetorical emphasis.

"not... not..." - the two things are on an equal level
"not... nor..." - the level is established by the first, and the second follows suit

However, it is not a quote, so i guess it's okay to have both versions.

I would invite other English speakers to give their opinions. To me, the two versions sound a bit different.

(btw, in the audio it's "ones")

The audio no longer corresponds to the text, so it has been removed.

There's another issue here. For the number to agree across the phrases, either "survive" should be changed to "survives", or "one" needs to be changed to "ones":

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

or:

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.

The latter is most likely what was meant, since we generally talk about multiple individuals who survive.

[eng] strongest of the specieS = [fra] l'espèce la plus forte / la plus forte des espèceS

I can't see a problem in this translation...

"Species" is both singular and plural, you know.
I understand the sentence was meant to read "the strongest specimen of the (singular) species" rather than "the strongest (singular) species of the (plural) species".

At the same time, both readings are semantically possible, and whether one of them is untrue is irrelevant, since we do not require all our sentences not to be false, do we? (Though untrue sentences are better tagged 'lie', of course.) Besides, is the other interpretation actually 100% false? I wouldn't think so.

I think it would be a nice solution to keep the sentence and have it tagged 'ambiguous' and, I suppose, 'invariable noun' or somesuch. There are quite a few such nouns in English and they can cause ambiguity occasionally, so I think that would be a useful tag.

Since it's a general statement true for all species, one could substitute "the species" by "a species" to avoid ambiguity.

Wouldn't that have a wee bit different feel? Feels are important, don't change them carelessly.

Maybe.
Unconsciously I translated it as "einer Art", and I don't 'feel' like changing it at the moment.

It sounded fine to me.
I added an Esperanto translation to your German variant, with which I'm quite satisfied. ☺

> It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

There is a lack of agreement between "survive" (plural) and "one" (singular) in this sentence. There are two ways to correct the sentence, one that makes both plural, and another that makes both singular. Every existing Esperanto, French, German, or Portuguese translation of this sentence makes both singular. Thus, I think that's the change we should apply to this sentence, namely:

It is not the strongest of the species that surviveS, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

(Naturally, the capital S should be lowercase in the actual sentence.)

We could additionally add a sentence that makes both plural:

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the oneS most responsive to change.

but that may just serve to complicate matters.