Article for translators: German

German

By McElroy Translation,
Austin, Texas 78701 USA

quotes[at]mcelroytranslation.com
http://www.mcelroytranslation.com/

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Overview

For the next few months, McElroy will be running a series of articles that highlight some of the characteristics of top languages used in doing business globally. This month, we look at German, in an interview conducted with McElroy Translator Gerhard Preisser.

What are some pitfalls to avoid, specific to this language, a client should be aware of when translating into this language?

First off, a general observation: A good German translation of an English source text is not only a product of good linguistic skills in both languages on the part of the translator; it also depends to a smaller or greater extent on the content, specifically the degree to which a given text is steeped in cultural/societal idiosyncrasies. English texts that draw heavily on concepts or experiences that are foreign to the intended German reader will require more than a translation to have the same impact they possess in English. Some examples: Advertising material with liberal baseball analogies, biographical texts highlighting school and university degrees commonly offered only in the US, product literature highlighting devices mostly unknown in Germany (such as a food disposal).

Some comments about technical documents (such as user manuals):

Clients should be aware that lengthy introductions common to US publications, expressing gratitude and appreciation for the customer for having bought a specific product, are considered somewhat ingratiating; a simple “we’re happy you bought our widget” will suffice perfectly.
Technical documents produced in the US sometimes tend to be quite personal in tone—this does not translate well into German and should be avoided (no need to say “please”).
Warranty information should reflect EU or German conventions and legal requirements; it is pointless to have finer legal points such as those regulating commerce between US states translated.
Toll-free phone customer service phone numbers are of no special help to potential callers from abroad.
Advising users of any given product to use non-metric tools (e.g. a “3/8 inch socket”) to manipulate non-metric devices/fasteners is rather pointless.

What are characteristics of this language that are unique or different from English and/or other languages?

Unlike English, German is a highly declensional language, based on a system of a multitude of inflections and cases. For each word in each word class—noun, verb or adjective—there is a substantial set of possible inflections. This makes stemming considerably more complicated compared to English.
It is possible in German to build compounds by joining two or more words, e.g. “Haustür” (front door) or “Schulbusfahrer” (school bus driver). In theory, any number of combinations—noun+noun, adjective+adjective, adjective+noun, adjective+verb, verb+noun, etc.—is conceivable. A popular example is the word “Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän”—captain commanding a steamboat on the [river] Danube.

How do these characteristics make it important to use properly qualified, professional translators?

Given the complex system of endings, it is not surprising that even native speakers of German with an average education occasionally get it wrong. Infamous trouble spots are the weak vs. strong declension of adjectives, correct endings of adjectives following certain indefinite numerals, verb forms in the subjunctive I, and strong vs. weak past participle forms of verbs. Yet mistakes of this sort, while relatively common, DO get noticed by discerning readers and anyone who thinks they have an above average grasp of the language (i.e. the vast majority of Germans holding post high school degrees), and they do cause irritation. Professional translators can be trusted to avoid such errors.

While declension and conjugation follow precisely and comprehensively defined rules, the issue of word building through compounding is by nature a bit more intuitive. Compounds lend themselves to the formation of perfectly acceptable neologisms; a police car is a “Polizeiauto,” the moon vehicle a “Mondauto,” and should there ever be a car made to ride on the surface of Venus, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be called a “Venusauto.” Compounds enlarge the available vocabulary almost endlessly, and I can think of dozens of perfectly legitimate compounds one won’t find in most dictionaries. Forming a compound, however, is not always as easy as taking one adjective/noun/verb and simply adding another adjective/noun/verb. Many require linking letters—such as s, es or er—and depending on the letter(s) chosen, the very same compound word may take on a different meaning: “Kinderkopf” is a child’s head, “Kindskopf” a childish person; “Geschichtenbuch” is a story book, “Geschichtsbuch” a history book.

The creation of compounds that make sense and are formed correctly is difficult to learn by a non-native speaker of German and, since compounds cannot always be verified by checking an available dictionary or glossary, a “finer point” of the language best left to experts.

Do you know examples where translation or localization mistakes have occurred with this language, such as problems with text expansion, date/time formats, counting errors, character encoding, etc., or mistakes with the translation itself?

In an average year, I edit/review anywhere between half a million and one million words. These projects are assigned to me by a number of translation agencies—on average, I accept projects from about 30 agencies a year, and about 80 percent of those projects come from about 30% of those agencies. Not surprisingly, those 10 or so agencies are my favorite clients; without exception, they have comprehensive translator selection and quality assurance processes in place, and accepting editing projects from them is relatively risk-free.

For business reasons, however, I also accept occasional reviewing assignments from a host of other agencies with less exacting quality standards, and in the past, I have encountered just about all the problems mentioned in your question. Two recent examples come to mind:

I was asked to edit a 20,000+ word brochure by an organization dedicated to educating consumers about timber native to the western US. The brochure was highly technical in nature; it offered descriptions of timber grades and standards and provided detailed descriptions of the criteria for each grade.

The project was completed on a tight schedule, and I was given a total of 12 hours to complete the edit. Any time extension was out of the question. Upon asking about the identity of the translator, I was told she was extremely qualified with experience in that particular field. Plus, she was an ATA accredited translator, and I should expect to make small, stylistic changes only. I did not know the translator by name, but accepted the assignment based on the assurances I received from the agency.

Unfortunately, the translation was of a very poor quality and required substantial revisions. The chosen style was inappropriate for its intended purpose and readership, and—more importantly—the terminology was frequently wrong, which I determined by spot-checking a few terms early on in the revision process. I contacted the agency to inform them of my concerns and to point out to them that I would need more time to do a proper job as the editor. I was told to do the best I could; no additional time could be granted.

Needless to say, despite my efforts at improving the translation, this project was delivered in a somewhat unfinished state. I was unable to verify all the chosen terminology, and I am convinced that the translation was seriously flawed—a fact that the end customer was most likely not informed of.

While this translation may have been created by a “professional translator,” it was not created by a translator competent in the field she was working in, and it was produced under unacceptable time pressure.

Another example: I was asked to edit a relatively short translation of descriptions of print advertisements for a large IT manufacturer. The German text read as though it was produced by either a non-native speaker with an above-average command of German or a native German speaker who was somewhat out of touch with his/her native language. The translation was both too colloquial and terminologically flawed. (A particularly annoying mistake was the consistent translation of the term advertisement with “Werbung,” which refers to a TV/radio commercial, but not to a print ad.) Had the translation not been edited, it would have been completely unacceptable to the end client.

One comment regarding text expansion: that’s an issue I run into all the time, especially with one particular client who produces software for printing equipment. I am usually allowed as many characters for German as there are for the English source word, which leads to almost comical efforts on my part to find shorter substitutes or to abbreviate the only available terms. Ex.: press (as in an offset press) is “Druckmaschine” in German, and there really are no substitutes. Thus a 5 letter word in English becomes a 13 letter word in German, and I usually have no choice but to create a strange acronym such as “Drckm.” Professional translators complain about this problem all the time, and many of them are engaged in intense client education efforts to convince the authors of such software to allow for a certain expansion factor in other languages.

Relate an example or two where you found a website page or form difficult to use because it was poorly localized into your language/locale. How might a business lose money, prestige or incur legal risk due to this bad translation?

All modern translators engage in web research in order to properly prepare for technical/scientific translations. To me, the Internet has become an invaluable resource, specifically in new and rapidly developing fields where printed dictionaries cannot possibly keep up with frequent changes and discoveries.

While conducting research in such areas, I have in the past frequently come across web sites originating in the US or other countries, describing complex technologies and/or processes in German (usually with the intent of generating interest in that company’s products or services in German speaking countries). I have quite often found that these companies decided not to invest in professional translators for these types of projects, but instead went with cheaper alternatives, to include machine-generated translations without any post-editing. The results are always predictable and range from unreliable terminology to incomprehensible gibberish.

Some time ago, I was working on a translation of a “float zone system” used in growing crystals for the semiconductor industry. During my initial web research, I came across the site of a small manufacturer of crystal growing equipment trying to promote his products to potential German buyers. The site was translated by a person other than a professional translator, as evidenced by the fact that ALL technical terms were left in English and put between quotation marks, rendering the translation basically useless (even when accounting for the fact that there is a fair number of technical terms in this industry that should indeed be left in English). It is hard to imagine that this particular buyer found even a single German buyer through their web site.

And about 4 years ago, I was translating information for German visitors to the Washington DC area, specifically information on how to use the local subway system. Imagine my surprise when I found an existing site, published by the same transit company, that was obviously created by translation software—with all the street names of subway/bus stops “translated” and directions for buying fare cards and using the systems that would have ensured that not one German tourist would be able to buy a ticket and get to where they really wanted to go. Obviously, a major blow to an image-conscious city like Washington, DC!

If possible, provide one example of a particular phrase or concept that only a properly qualified, professional translator would be able to correctly communicate.

I do a fair amount of translation work in the fields of printing and publishing, especially with the translation of manuals describing offset presses, register guidance systems, color control systems etc. The language used to describe this type of equipment is quite idiosyncratic and specific to this industry; terms that have a rather general meaning in common language take on a very specific meaning in connection with printing.

So, having worked in this field for over 12 years (and investing thousands of dollars in dictionaries and applicable reference books), I know that an “alley” is the space between columns of texts, except for a certain manufacturer, who uses “alley” as a synonym of “page.” I also know that a “circumferential position” is nothing more complex than a position in the up or down direction of a web (as opposed to a “lateral” position), and that “trapping” is the printing of one ink (color) over another. While the notion that common terms have a special significance when used in a particular technical field, applies to a host of specialties (IT is another prominent example), this is particularly true of the printing industry, and perplexing to anyone not familiar with it.

When I first started out as a professional translator and ventured out into this field, I was quickly humbled by falling into quite a few of these linguistic “traps” (pun intended!), and I didn’t waste any time in deciding that I had to invest a lot of time and effort in educating myself in this subject matter. As a professional, I simply had no other choice.