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Category Archives: Germanlang
Goethe Institut online library
It seems one can hire ebooks and audio and video media online from the Goethe Institut – have not tried it myself.
You may have to search a bit.
Thanks to Cherry for the tip.
The importance of learning German
It seems we in Britain still expect important events to be conducted in English. Thus the experience of the Telegraph’s ‘live blogger’ Ben Bloom yesterday:
Jürgen Klopp to quite Borussia Dortmund on July 1 – as it happened
14.00
And with that I bid you farewell. Again, many apologies for a hopeless lack of German knowledge. You’d think it would have been a prerequisite to live blog a Borussia Dortmund press conference but perhaps not. Only time will tell if the person who tweeted me suggesting I am getting “sacked in the morning” is correct.
I also apologise for this live blog becoming far too much about me. I can assure you it will not happen again. Let us end on what we came here for: Jurgen Klopp. It isn’t often that one of the world’s leading managers becomes available so expect the speculation to run, run and run some more until he gets another job. It’ll be interesting.
Thanks for joining me. Cheerio.
We like Jürgen Klopp and second that. And doubt whether it was his fault that he was given an assignment he could not understand.
15.20
Sadly, Ben Bloom has now gone home to start his German lessons. But he appears to have become something of a web sensation in the meantime, so here are some of the funniest tweets about his ridiculous press conference coverage.
(PS. We haven’t fired him. Yet.)
German Scrabble
This cartoon is by Emmanuel Cornet, whose interesting bio can be found on his website. It shows that nowadays you don’t have to remain a French maths teacher, or even a bass and guitar player, all your life. I found the cartoon at www.bonkersworld.net.
Thanks to Herb for the tip.
Changing terminology
In another mailing list last week, I was struck by the question of how to translate the term divorce decree into German.
One would normally write Scheidungsurteil, but recently the term Urteil has been removed from German divorce law, apparently because it makes divorce sound like a fight (haha!). Indeed, all family law cases now end in a Beschluss, which sounds more harmless, allegedly.
See Es gibt keine Scheidungsurteile mehr in Thomas von der Wehl’s blog.
Wir haben nur durch das neue FamFG eine neue Begrifflichkeit erhalten. Aus einem schwer nachvollziehbaren Grunde hat der Gesetzgeber den Begriff Scheidungsurteil abgeschafft und durch den Begriff Scheidungsbeschluss ersetzt. Er wollte damit ausdrücken, dass es sich bei Scheidungsverfahren um angeblich weniger streitige Verfahren handelt und dieses Weniger an Streit mit dem etwas geringerwertigen Begriff “Beschluss” kenntlich machen. Ich halte das für Unsinn, zumal die Vermutung, Scheidungsverfahren seien weniger weniger streitige Verfahren, häufig falsch ist.
So the colleague’s question was: do we change the translated term to suit new German practice? The answer on all sides was ‘no’.
And yet when English law removed the term plaintiff and replaced it by claimant, translators in the UK followed suit, even though the term plaintiff is used in Ireland and thus in the EU, and also in the USA and other common-law jurisdictions. And similarly, in family law, it’s common to use contact instead of access in translations, just because the term has changed in English law.
Of course one has to consider how close the concepts are in German law and English law. And also whether the audience is from one specific jurisdiction – it’s statistically more sensible to use plaintiff unless the readership are purely from the UK.
I’m trying to think of other cases where changes in terminology might affect translations. One area is the introduction of ‘politically correct’ usage, which may occur in the USA and UK before it does in Germany. Should a German institution use non-sexist language in its English documentation even if it doesn’t in German? I think so.
The names of courts, court personnel and lawyers often change. So do forms of companies and partnerships.
Of course, many concepts are not close and the target language needs a definition. It’s only terms like Scheidungsurteil and plaintiff that are close enough that one wonders whether to follow changes in the target language.
Gesetzesvorbehalt
There’s a term in German constitutional law, Gesetzesvorbehalt, literally (reservation/requirement of a statute).
On Legally Yours, Rob Lunn discusses the equivalent Spanish concept. How to translate “reserva de ley” into English (using a descriptive strategy).
In my database I find a suggestion to translate the German term as ‘constitutional requirement of the specific enactment of a statute’ (because secondary legislation is not enough).
It is apparently sometimes translated as ‘legal reservation’ or ‘reservation of law’, which doesn’t convey the meaning at all.
The word Vorbehalt is often a problem. If you translate it as ‘reservation’, you are using a word that’s less usual in legal English than Vorbehalt is in legal German.
I prefer ‘requirement’.
There’s a discussion of the term on LEO (quite useful in parts, but I particularly enjoyed the comment ‘I actually discussed that topic with a common lawyer. He completely ignored that concept’ with its interesting use of ‘ignored’).
I’ve apparently had to translate quite a few words with ‘Vorbehalt’ as part: Änderungsvorbehalt, Beamtenvorbehalt/Funktionsvorbehalt, Eigentumsvorbehalt (reservation/retention of title), Einwilligungsvorbehalt, Erlaubnisvorbehalt, Identitätsvorbehalt, Kontokorrentvorbehalt, Liefervorbehalt, Parlamentsvorbehalt (another term for Gesetzesvorbehalt), Progressionsvorbehalt, and several more.
I can’t quite agree with Rob that this is such a culture-specific term (see Things I learnt from a journo about translating culture-specific terms: (1) Description trumps linguistic solutions), but OK, it is not a concept that applies to UK constitutional law. I would definitely use the definition here, and I might not add the German in brackets.
LATER NOTE: A query on a mailing list relates to Saldohaftungvorbehalt, as in ‘ Eigentumsvorbehalt
Bis zur vollständigen Bezahlungen bleiben alle gelieferten Waren unser Eigentum (Saldohaftungsvorbehalt).’
I would suggest ‘liability for balance’.
Zur vollsten Zufriedenheit: voll verwirrend für Übersetzer
Beck Blog (Prof. Dr. Markus Stoffels) reports on a recent decision:
Unzufrieden mit „voller Zufriedenheit“? BAG äußert sich zur Leistungsbeurteilung in Zeugnissen
in which the Federal Employment Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht) found it was acceptable for an employee to receive the equivalent of Grade 3 on the six-grade scale because this is the average grade).
Die Note 1 wird mit der Formulierung „stets zur vollsten Zufriedenheit“, die Note 2 mit „stets zur vollen Zufriedenheit“, die Note 3 mit „zur vollen Zufriedenheit“ und die Note 4 mit „zur Zufriedenheit“ zum Ausdruck gebracht.
An employee who wanted a better grade had to show evidence it was deserved.
One sometimes wonders how to translate these terms, where ‘satisfactory’ is quite negative. The non-German recipient ought to be informed of the code used, but I can’t see any other way to translate it except literally (I have actually refused to translate references of this kind in the past).
According to Wikipedia:
Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Bulgaria are the only countries in Europe where employees can legally claim an employment reference, including the right to a correct, unambiguous and benevolent appraisal.
Meanwhile, as English is used more and more widely, the Frankfurter Allgemeine is worried about unfortunate phrases in bad English:
Es gibt Empfehlungen, die mehr schaden als nützen: „He left us with enthusiasm“ oder „You will be lucky to have him to work for you“ gehören zweifellos dazu – besonders wenn sie als gutgemeinte Abschiedsformeln am Ende eines englischen Arbeitszeugnisses stehen.
Here’s the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the same topic (interview with Professor Arnulf Weuster):
Der Bewerber war “attentive to detail”, ein Pedant also. Der Vorgesetzte bescheinigt ihm Flexibilität. Schade nur, dass “flexible” auch “unentschlossen” heißt. Deutsche Arbeitszeugnisse ins Englische zu übersetzen, ist tückisch. Arnulf Weuster, Professor an der Hochschule Offenburg, hat Ratgeber zum Thema verfasst. Trotzdem hält er es letztlich für unmöglich, alle Feinheiten der Zeugnissprache zu übertragen.
And here’s Toytown Germany discussing it.
Daumen drücken
“Cross your fingers, or press your thumbs if you are a German, that we hear something from the lander again,” Valentina Lommatsch of the Rosetta mission control centre in Germany.
I haven’t been able to establish whether she is German by origin. The name Valentina is not common in Germany. The pressing of thumbs caused surprise in some quarters:
The Germans are weird in other ways. According to Inglorious Basterds if asked to hold up three fingers, they use thumb and next two fingers. Hollywood wouldn’t lie to us would they???
theGermanStandard is a blog by Kathrin, a teacher of German in London which explains this kind of thing. If crossing your fingers doesn’t help, try pressing your thumbs has a picture too. The gesture seems to go back to gladiator fights in ancient Rome.
As Johnson noted, crossing your fingers suggests you are hoping to avoid the worst, whereas Daumen drücken is about hoping for success.
I was excited to read the tweets from Philae Lander, in view of the fact that tweeting hadn’t been invented when it set off:
.@ESA_Rosetta I’m feeling a bit tired, did you get all my data? I might take a nap… #CometLanding
But maybe they are further evidence of alien activity on the comet:
According to an email published on the website UFOSightingsDaily.com – which does a regular trade in alien sightings – this mission is part of a European Space Agency and Nasa cover-up to disguise the comet’s true alien nature.
Making mistakes in German (Raed Saleh, Erasmus students in Austria)
1. Raed Saleh is a German SPD politician, who was born in the West Bank (Westjordanland) but grew up in Germany. He is a potential next mayor of Berlin, but it seems a large number of journalists believe his German is too bad. An article in taz, Ein dubioses Hörproblem (with a video clip so you can hear Saleh speaking), disagreed: it analysed the transcript of a TV interview and counted up the errors made by Saleh and the two interviewers. I wouldn’t say Saleh has a foreign accent, but some say he has, and it appears that he can’t be mentioned without the word ‘migrant’ being used, and more errors are heard in his German than are there.
As some of the commenters rightly say, if he does speak excellent German it still doesn’t qualify him to be the mayor of Berlin!
(Via Sprachlog)
2. Linz University has an (Upper) Austrian – German – English dictionary to help visiting Erasmus students (Zur besseren Verständigung zwischen (ober)österreichischen Studenten und Erasmus-Studenten).
The entries are marked as rural (L: ländlicher Raum), urban (S: städtischer Raum) and urban/Viennese (W: wienerisch/städtisch), and also as positive, negative and neutral, though these terms are not explained in English. Red marks language that should not be used.
It seems to refer to spoken language. The English looks fine, although defeated by Leberkäs (‘a type of meat popular in Austria’). And I feel some of the vocabulary is chosen because it’s funny, although it’s probably rare (Beamtenforelle, Holzpyjama – and how often in Linz do they talk about a schöne Leich nowadays?). It’s not all Austrian (den Löffel abgeben) and some is just pronunciation/spelling (moanen: meinen).
German men’s first names
Andrew Hammel is concerned about the Christian names of the German football team (Remigius-Ekkehard Scores!, ending with an interrobang).
Yesterday the German men’s national soccer team won the World Cup. But what sort of names did these “‘Germans'” have? Per and Philipp are just barely acceptable, but Toni? Kevin? Mario? Sami? Manuel?
Manuel?!
Did we lose a war, people?!
But in the interim period, forgetting the Remigiuses and Siegfrieds (I know a couple of Ekkehards, somewhat younger than me), there are quite a few weird German male names. I once spent half an hour with a friend, going through all the ones we could think of.
With apologies in advance to those affected, what about:
Uwe, Udo, Lars, Bodo, Axel, Tillmann, Rüdiger, Wolfgang, Wolf, Heribert, Egon, Golo, Friedhelm, Hans-Werner, Horst, Günter, Jörg, Eberhard.
When Friedwald was first introduced, I thought it might make a German first name.
Of course some curious English names too. Wayne is odd, but his elder son Kai a normal German name.
So the first fruit has fallen from Wayne Rooney’s loins. Coleen Rooney gave birth to an 8lb boy yesterday, which the couple have named Kai.
The name appears to have various origins across different cultures. Babynames.com asserts that it is Hawaiian in origin and means ocean, although it adds that Kai could also come from “the Welsh form of Caius”, which apparently means “the keeper of the keys”. Meanwhile babynames.co.uk, a company presumably not linked to babynames.com, insists Kai is of Scandinavian origin, meaning “rejoice”.