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Mistranslation: "German Cancer Research Center" should be "German Crabs Research Center"?

• MandieD 9y ago
  "Cancer" is the right English translation in this case - the German original is "Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum". A center dedicated to studying crustaeceans would probably be called "Krebstiereforschungszentrum" ("Crab-animals" research center). "Krebs" means either cancer (the diseases) or crabs (the animals). The tumors that early physicians saw reminded them of crabs, so that's what they called them. English forked cancer (Latin word for crabs) to mean the diseases and uses the evolved colloquial word for the animals, but German uses its evolved colloquial word for both. "Krebstiere" is often used to refer to crabs as a group, probably to avoid misunderstandings. Prof. Dr. Lyko seems to primarily study epigenetics, and it's just coincidence that the animals he's studied here are crabs: http://www.dkfz.de/en/epigenetik/ http://www.dkfz.de/en/epigenetik/
• usrusr 9y ago
  Just glanced over a german language interview, it's basically the introductory question, "sounds like a bad joke, please explain". Actual cancer researchers, looking for a cloning species to observe environmental influence on gene expression (which seems to be a candidate cause for some kinds of cancer or so). So they basically did it for confirming the availability very big, naturally occurring twin experiment. http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/genetik-forscher-sequenzieren-flusskrebs-der-sich-wie-krebs-vermehrt-a-1191524.html http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/genetik-forscher-se...