Category Archives: the translation business

Denglisch, etymology, the translation business, translation

False friends

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False friends – that is, apparent cognates in two languages that actually have quite different meanings – are often a source of difficulty for the foreign language learner. I’ve been shocked to realize on several occasions that my understanding of specific German terms –  the definitions of which seemed secure in my internal lexicon – had in fact been distorted by their putative English equivalents. When the error concerns a word for which one has a certain fondness, the experience is all the most disconcerting. Just yesterday I learned that, while the term “latent” can certainly have the exact same meaning in both languages,  it tends in German to designate a “hidden” but “constantly present” thing – in English, by contrast,  the term in everyday usage refers to a hidden potential which has not yet manifested itself. This is a key distinction: is the thing being described active or not? I had muttered quite a bit of invective under my breath at the author of the text I was translating for his ostensible misuse of the term before consulting with a German native speaker, who disabused me of my misconception.

For me, in the end, this was a harmless error. A young girl who lives on the ground floor of our building wasn’t as lucky when she unwittingly stumbled into the snares of an embarrassing false cognate the other week. The girl in question, who on occassion attempts to showcase her English skills in my presence, announced during a brief exchange in the stairwell that she had “not douched today” – in German, “duschen” means “to shower,” but the word has quite a different meaning in English. This was a bit of personal trivia which I would have gladly been spared.

Denglisch, synonomy, the translation business, translation, translation humor, translation problems

Parenthetical inserts

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A frequent point of difficulty for the German-to-English translator concerns the handling of parenthetical inserts, as there is a clear divergence between the two languages in the conventions that govern their usage. While parenthesis are used in both German and English to offer explanatory or qualifying statements about that which is said, German parenthetical remarks are often introduced in a manner that the English native speaker cannot help but find somewhat abrupt. In English, for example, when a substitute term is introduced in parenthesis, the new term is typically offered in the form of a rhetorical aside. Take the following example:

The Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang) was a far-left radical group.

The phrase “also known as” helps to steer the reader and preserve the cadence of the sentence. In German, however, alternative terms are often presented in a highly direct manner, without such formalities, as in the following examples:

Die Planzen werden in den Kärntner Alpen (Nockberge) in einem Naturschutzprojekt kultiviert und streng kontrolliert geerntet.

Bei der Schaltung von Bannern und dem Einkauf von Werbeflächen (Mediaplanung) stehen wir unseren Kunden mit unserem langjährigen Know-how zur Seite.

Although this style of substitutional insertion is not unknown in English, it is used far less frequently than in German. This type of substitution, when translated directly, often yields a target sentence with a disjointed feeling. In this way, in light of the clear discrepencies between German and English usage in this area, the translator should take the liberty of rephrasing parenthetical inserts to conform with the conventions of good, standard English, lightly embellishing them as necessary to ensure smooth sentence cadence.