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As a developer working in a German company the question of translating some domain language items into English comes up here and there. Mostly we fail because t

• titanomachy 1y ago
  Care to share an example or two?
  • bradley13 1y ago
    I hope he will give us an actual example from his work. But meanwhile, here's a classic example: The Donau is a river. On this river is a steamship (Dampfshiff): Donaudampfschiff This ship is part of an organisation (Gesellschaft) that manages cruises (Fahrt): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft The ship has a captain (Kapitän) who has a cap (Mütze): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze On this cap is a button (Knopf): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopf You could extend this example: The button is colored with a special paint (Farbe), which is produced in a factory (Fabrik): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopffarbenfabrik And the factory has an entry gate (Eingangstor): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopffarbenfabrikeingangstor In English, this would be a huge sentence, all in reverse order: The entry gate of the factory that produces the color for the button on the captain's cap of the ship belonging to the cruise organization on the Donau. The German is a lot more compact, if sometimes hard to parse :-)
    • praptak 1y ago
      I don't remember many events from 1996 but my German boss walking into the office excited about the spelling reform of "Schiffahrt" certainly stood out as a memorable event. (They added the third f or maybe re-added it)
      • Skeime 1y ago
        Context, maybe just for others: Schiff is ship and Fahrt is ride, so eine Schifffahrt is a cruise (and without the article, it is also the term for seafaring in general). Anyway, you can see that Schiff ends with two Fs and Fahrt starts with one, so if you put them together to form a compound word, you get three Fs in a row, Schifffahrt. In pre-reform German spelling, this was deemed excessive, so one would write Schiffahrt, instead. The German spelling reform in the mid-90s changed this, so now you do the logical thing. (Whether the old way really was confusing and which way is more aesthetic are separate questions.)
      • bashkiddie 1y ago
        Yeah, there has been a changeset in spelling rules https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_der_deutschen_Rechtschreibung_von_1996 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_der_deutschen_Rechtschr... ... several times: 1996,2004,2006,2011,2017. The current correct spelling is either Schiff-Fahrt or Schifffahrt.
        • lucb1e 1y ago
          Impartial foreigner here who has no stake in the old or new spelling. If you're combining ship and port, you can't just write shiport. Of course it's shiff-fahrt / shifffahrt? By what logic does anyone argue anything else?
          • praptak 1y ago
            First of all, it was probably a descriptivist move. What I think happened is that people wrote 'ff' because 'fff' looked like a typo or was less convenient to write, so the linguistics codified that. Also, there are portmanteau words where the middle letters overlap, e.g. bro+romance=bromance.
            • lucb1e 1y ago
              Bromance does not sound like broromance in speech
            • 1y ago
    • andoando 1y ago
      I mean is this really one word though, or a bunch of words just spelled with no spacing?
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • watwut 1y ago
        It is one word in German. It has one article, Germans talk about it as about a single word and treat it as a single word for grammar purposes. You can use it as a single noun in any sentence. But it also odd example for this, because it is long as hell anyway already and additional spacing that English equivalent would require is just opportunity to wrap. It is just harder to read, but English equivalent would be easier to layout.
        • mejutoco 1y ago
          > It is one word in German Is it in the dictionary?
      • plz_throw 1y ago
        It really is one "new" word consisting of a bunch of words spelled without spaces. It is a compound, where every word adds additinal information to the last component. An easier example is sth like "Altbauwohnung" which would be an apartment (Wohnung) in an old (alt) building (Bau) where "Altbau" is also a compound. This way of compunding enables you to build new words everyone can understand the first time they encounter them, but also to build those stupidly long words.
        • andoando 1y ago
          What if I said in English, you can "compound" words with adjectives so for example if you have a book, you can add red and say redbook, and you can keep going and do stuff like uselessoldreddirtyneverusedbook. You can even add possessives which have their own adjectives, like if the book was owned by a redbearded german army vet you'd say The redbeardedgermanarmyvet'suselessoldreddirtyneverusedbook
    • throw310822 1y ago
      In fact, with added spaces, works fine in English too (since English is also a Germanic language): the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button. And extended: the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button's colour factory's entry gate. EDIT: Let's not forget to mention its Java implementation, which goes full German: DonauSteamshipCruiseOrganizationCaptainButtonsColorFactory
      • ggm 1y ago
        The German is only worse because we want to treat it worse, the sentence isn't much longer and they're broadly equal in conceptual cost. Which isn't surprising since Anglo Saxon is at the heart of the non French bits of English.
        • marcosscriven 1y ago
          Exactly. It’s not like you can even hear the absence of spaces in one or the other. It’s purely a writing choice.
          • ggm 1y ago
            Australian ad of 30+ years ago: avagoodweekend and dontforgetaboutheaeroguard
          • cmrdporcupine 1y ago
            And I think the use of spaces between pieces of nouns in English has more to do with the fact that -- in comparison to German -- the pronounciation is so unpredictable from the spelling that not having the visual indicator between pieces could leave you completely lost -- "what word is this?" Whereas German has very regular and consistent rules of pronounciation that map closely to spellings, so once habituated you can scan it from the page and spit it out more reliably. Still, having grown up with English as my first language and (partially) learned German as a young man, learning German gave me more appreciation for English. Which only grew once I studied a bit of Anglo-Saxon. I love our language, there's just something about its character. A spelling reform would be nice (though entirely impractical) though.
    • 3036e4 1y ago
      Swedish works the same (unsurprisingly), but note that programming languages also kind of do that. If you had to use a word like that in Java you would just mash all the words together in CamelCase and it would be pretty much the same as using the long German word (and almost exactly as difficult to read) even if technically it moved from being a single word to being a long list of words. It can still be a single identifier without spaces even if you translate to a language where it can not be a single word.
    • gloxkiqcza 1y ago
      German is a prime candidate to implement PascalCase in a natural language.
      • Skeime 1y ago
        This is not necessary. Practiced German speakers generally do not struggle with splitting words into their components because syllables follow relatively predictable patterns. You will run into ambiguities from time to time, of course, but the same applies to tons of other features of natural languages as well. (Do you want to outlaw homophones in English?) Anyway, there is also a perfectly acceptable and established way of making German words easier to parse if need be: hyphens. So Hyphen-Case instead of PascalCase.
        • gloxkiqcza 1y ago
          Interesting insight, thanks! Linguistics is fascinating, especially in the wider cognitive science context.
        • School-Cotton 1y ago
          When I was learning to read German, for the longest time I thought the word “letztendlich” was “letz-tendlich” (which is meaningless but at least theoretically pronounceable) rather than “letzt-endlich” (which is what it actually is). I’m sure a native German speaker wouldn’t make the same mistake, though.
          • hengheng 1y ago
            The century old tradition has set up a couple rakes for native speakers to step into. "Selbständig" (freelancing) is obviously derived like self-standing, but "selb" is archaic and completely unused, prompting native learners to write 'selbstständig, which is wrong. Couple more ones like this. Ask a native speaker about hinüber vs herüber, they will be perplexed, because it feels so dialectal. And nobody even knows about imperfect tense vs perfect tense, it's just stylistics to most.
            • 1y ago
    • hoseyor 1y ago
      This is not an accurate or precise example. You surely know you are misleading people. German does not simply just concatenate words ad infinitum across logical classification, a concatenated, compound word is generally logically limited by classification. The concatenation generally only tends to be used in relevant (operative word being “relevant”), increasing smaller/lower logical classification. You generally will not rise and fall in that classification, let alone jump horizontally as you concatenate. It is really just a logic tree, you don’t all the sudden jump trunks or branches. It has to be a logically precise unit. You’re essentially just saying ManBearPig. It’s not an actual thing. So the entry gate of the factory that produces paint that happens to maybe also be used on the button of the cap of the captain of the ship on the Danube and is also part of a union, is not… Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze nknopffarbenfabrikeingangstor
  • arnsholt 1y ago
    An example from my work: in Norwegian criminal law, the prosecutor can in some cases hand out what is called a «påtaleunnlatelse», which means something like «decision to not prosecute». This is a legal punishment in the sense that it goes on your criminal record, but no punishment beyond that is handed out. Basically, the prosecutor’s office can note down «we are convinced we can prove this was done, but have decided not to prosecute». A special kind of this is the «prosessøkonomisk (process economical) påtaleunnlatelse» where in a large and complex case with many serious offences, some less serious can be non-prosecuted in this way to not spend eternity in the courtroom.
    • hugh-avherald 1y ago
      In Australian English, this is known as "Section 10".
      • jamiek88 1y ago
        In English English it’s a ‘caution’.
        • pbhjpbhj 1y ago
          In law of England and Wales we also have recording of non-crimes, which aren't cautions (it goes back to combating institutional racism).
        • arnsholt 1y ago
          So these are kind of fun to compare. At the high level they clearly all have the same purpose: in some cases it's socially useful to have the punishment for a crime simply be a statement of "person X did this thing". But the details vary a bit: - It seems the Australian section 10 is handed out by the court, where the English and Norwegian options dispense with a trial entirely. It also looks like a Section 10 doesn't go in a person's criminal record, unlike the other two. - It looks like the English caution requires an admission of guilt, while the Norwegian option is at the prosecutor's discretion within the rules of applicability of the procedure. Of course someone not demanding a trial when given this can be seen as an _implicit_ admission of guilt, but the legal nuance can probably be important. - The English and Norwegian procedures are nominally also different in who makes the decision: the English procedure is handled by the police, while in Norway it's the prosecutor's office. But this is more a theoretical than practical difference I think, because the Norwegian prosecutor's office is organized differently than the English Crown Prosecution Service: here, the lowest levels of prosecutors are integrated into the police services they work with, so in practice I think it works out much the same.
  • arnsholt 1y ago
    Another example, not involving compound nouns: Norwegian criminal process distinguishes two levels of suspicion. The first level «mistenkt» (suspect) is basically the investigation noting down in their log «we think this guy might have done it», but the second level «siktet» (literally aimed at, no idea how to translate to English or even if an equivalent term exists) is a formal decision made by the prosecutor’s office. And importantly, the use of «tvangsmidler» (coercive instruments, like arrest, search, seizure and so on) requires there to be a siktelse and this status also triggers legal rights for the accused like the right to a defence attorney.
    • noduerme 1y ago
      There are similar distinctions in American law, e.g. with the police's right to tarry you. A short stop by the police can be conducted for 'reasonable articulable suspicion' of committing a crime, such as seeing you make a rash judgment in driving, while a longer stop or an arrest requires 'probable cause' such as smelling marijuana in your car after the initial stop.
      • wqpfofo 1y ago
        You mean 'Terry' which is not a verb. The name comes from a Supreme Court case I am too lazy to look up. Correct usage is, "the police conducted a Terry stop and frisked the subject for weapons for their own protection."
        • noduerme 1y ago
          Hah! That's amazing. Thanks for the correction. I had only heard it, not read it; I assumed it was from the verb 'to tarry'. The meaning is similar enough that it made sense.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• watwut 1y ago
  The exact same issue exists with translating English to German - long German words suddenly dont fit. And with translating English into Polish too.
  • blkhawk 1y ago
    yes, this can cause even major-ish UI issues - like in android where this happens: cut,copy,paste auschneiden,kopieren,einfügen this can break the UI so you have scroll on a popup just to copy a piece of text because google put "copy" last in the selection.
  • rawbert 1y ago
    I was once involved in building the UI for a video game. There was some kind of labels for baseic color selection ... "czerwony" instead of "red" broke everything :F
• arnsholt 1y ago
  I worked on a case management system for a few years that dealt with Norwegian criminal law, and we did the same. Technical terms and conventional parts of method identifiers (like getFoo, setFoo, isFoo and such) were in English while the domain terminology was left in Norwegian. It looks a bit weird when you first encounter it, but honestly it was fine. Especially for a domain with as much emphasis on nuance and as many country specific details as the legal domain anything else would be a terrible idea IMO. Not only would it be really hard to translate many cases, it would probably make the code harder to understand and in some cases even cause misunderstandings.
  • dep_b 1y ago
    Yeah nothing worse than entering a translated to English portal for Dutch tax purposes. Because those English words also ended up in Business Dutch but then got another meaning. Dutchlish, or at least the original term in parenthesis) is really preferable to anything else.
    • lucb1e 1y ago
      Words like beamer for projector... but isn't that similar between all countries? Even within English-speaking countries? You don't know what some Australian-specific or AAVE word means until someone tells you, no matter where you're from. Every version of English is a dialect of English so long as it's still a complete language (having semantics and all that)
  • ChristianJacobs 1y ago
    Same as a friend of mine who works for NAV. There's a whole lot of long-ass variable and function names because they use the Norwegian name for whatever they are calculating. It makes sense for them though, as the ones who review your code are lawyers...
• veltas 1y ago
  Have to think of a translation for an EinfacheBeansFabrikBewusstAspektInstanzFabrik
  • hoseyor 1y ago
    What is “Simple Beans Factory Aware Aspect Instance Factory” supposed to actually mean? That does not seem like a concept at all, let alone an actual German word. “Beans” is not even German, there is no German word spelled “Beans”.
    • oaiey 1y ago
      You have not programmed Java with J2EE / Jakarta EE right? (me neither but that is the kind of factories you build there ... at least in folklore)
      • amiga386 1y ago
        Example: https://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/apidocs/org/apache/xmlrpc/server/RequestProcessorFactoryFactory.RequestSpecificProcessorFactoryFactory.html https://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/apidocs/org/apache/xmlrpc/serve...
      • watashiato 1y ago
        https://web.archive.org/web/20170629103902/http://www.bash.org/?962108 https://web.archive.org/web/20170629103902/http://www.bash.o...
    • bryanrasmussen 1y ago
      it's obviously a joke, because that would be a technical term not a business one.
• adrianmonk 1y ago
  > * English for technical identifiers and German for business langugage, leading to lets say "interesting" code* So it's code-switching code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
  • bahmboo 1y ago
    Good reference to a higher level concept. Your linked article was a fun jumping off point.
• nickdothutton 1y ago
  I work with a lot of Germans and have noticed this. For me to provide the English translation that is the most accurate I have to dig deep. The unabridged English dictionary has plenty of words but I feel slightly guilty providing them with a word which I know is the best fit but which they will probably never encounter anywhere else, and where most English people would just not know this word. The definition is often quite contextual and nuanced, hinting at (for example) the reliability of the thing that is described by it, or the way it is used (or was used) in society (e.g. for good or ill). The "baggage" I suppose.
  • yurishimo 1y ago
    I've had this same discussion with a colleague at my job in the Netherlands. He will ask me to choose from a list he provides for variable names. Usually I need to ask for more context and then I end up leaning towards the more "well known/normal" option, both because it still fits and will be more likely to be understood another decade from now when we've probably both moved on and are not there to answer anymore questions. Discussing the words is a fun way to take a little break during the workday, but I don't consider it more than that.
• mytailorisrich 1y ago
  The issue is not so much one of language but of habit and usage. That's why in that sense it is important for scientific and technical domains to be taught and practiced in your own language. This allows terms to evolve and be used habitually in the language.
• marcosscriven 1y ago
  I think the issue of German compound nouns is seriously overegged. In almost all cases, it’s essentially the same as English, except with some spaces. It’s not like suddenly a short compound word expresses something that couldn’t be in English.
  • InsideOutSanta 1y ago
    This is true, but some German compound words acquire a meaning that doesn't simply derive from their component words. Well-known ones include Kindergarten and Weltschmerz. This is often the case for domain-specific terms (Gestaltpsychologie, Bildungsroman).
    • Tainnor 1y ago
      Weltschmerz and Bildungsroman relate very closely to their compositional meaning. Sure, they have become slightly more specialised (a novel about a teacher wouldn't be a "Bildungsroman", I guess), but it's not like you can't make an educated guess. Also, the fact that collocations can acquire more specialised meanings than just the sum of their parts is hardly unique to German (in English, the "theory of relativity" means something very specific and isn't used, e.g., for moral or epistemic relativism).
      • elygre 1y ago
        You find the same in any language. A «coming of age» story is not about birthdays.
        • KPGv2 1y ago
          And in any case, "this concept is untranslatable" is nonsense, usually born out of xenophobia or jingoism. "MY language is more expressive than those OTHERS." Every language has technical words that "cannot be translated." But when we say "cannot be translated," what we mean is "it is unsafe to expect a foreign reader to know what the term means without explanation." It's not that it can't be translated; it's that there isn't necessarily a single-word equivalent. I agree with the original suggestion that these can be a challenge to translate elegantly. But, speaking as a lawyer by training, the solution is obvious: you begin your technical document by describing novel technical terms. Then you use them in your document without explanation. Consider "sushi": how do you translate that? Nowadays, we don't. But before it was widely known, you could've just said "a sour rice dish" and be done with it. (For those of you thinking "no wait, sushi is raw fish," no. That's sashimi. Sushi is vinegared rice mixed with other stuff, often. (Sushi can be with egg, pickled plum, crab, beef, etc. none of which are fish.) Makizushi = rolled sour rice Nigirizushi = sour rice to be gripped Chirashizushi = sour rice with stuff scattered in it
• Fokamul 1y ago
  In my experience, problems is not with German as a language, but with Germans requiring to use their hard language, I live in neighboring country and since like 2010, nobody bothers to learn German anymore, (some small percent still learn, ok) and everyone who I know rather works in different country because of this. Like Netherlands, still hard language (multiple) but they don't expect you to learn it when working for multi-national company.
  • k__ 1y ago
    Strange. In my experience as a German, everyone instantly switches to English if just one non-German speaker is in the group.
    • dagw 1y ago
      I suspect it's largely a generational/regional thing. My wife has lots of family from various rural parts of Eastern Germany, and half of the people over 50 speak effectively no English.
      • School-Cotton 1y ago
        It’s definitely generational and regional. It’d be hard to find a young educated German in Berlin who doesn’t speak English well.
      • couscouspie 1y ago
        They probably learned Russian in school in the former communist part of Germany.
      • quickthrowman 1y ago
        Do they know Russian? They had no reason to learn English if they’re over 50 and lived in East Germany, for obvious reasons. Someone that is 50 now would’ve graduated high school in 1993, only a few years after German reunification.
  • Tainnor 1y ago
    In every country there will be some expat bubble which can get away with not learning the local language(s). Sometimes that bubble will be bigger and sometimes smaller, but it definitely exists in Germany too (mostly in Berlin). That said, I simply don't understand the mindset of people who move somewhere for an extended period of time and don't bother to learn the language. It locks you out of a lot of opportunities and makes you dependent on other people (especially for official/administrative/legal purposes). It also simply doesn't work in many places - (younger) Germans may speak decent English, but try going to Spain, Italy, or even Japan and see how far you get if you insist on speaking only English.
• mambru 1y ago
  Eierschalensollbrucherzeuger...
  • k__ 1y ago
    Hühnerfruchtharfe...
  • ycuser2 1y ago
    Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher, please!
• oytis 1y ago
  I don't know where the idea about the preciseness of German language comes from, especially in anything computer-related. For one, German language famously fails to distinguish between safety and security as well as between an error, a fault and a mistake. Whenever Germans discuss any software matters, they seem to be "code-switching" to English terms themselves. Compounds have to be translated using multiple words, yes - that's just a few extra white space, it doesn't result in loss of precision.
  • ljlolel 1y ago
    Also between painting and drawing. And between pumpkin and squash lol
    • ahartmetz 1y ago
      Painting - Gemälde Drawing - Zeichnung Picture - Bild You were thinking of Bild, I guess?
      • ljlolel 1y ago
        Mahlen
        • VonGallifrey 1y ago
          painting = Malen a painting = Gemälde drawing = Zeichnen a drawing = Zeichnung
          • mr_mitm 1y ago
            Mahlen is grinding, you mean Malen
            • VonGallifrey 1y ago
              Fixed. I should have gotten a clue when I spelled Gemälde without the extra h.
• k__ 1y ago
  Back in the day, my programming techniques professor said something similar. Technical entities get English names, domain entities get German names. I also dimmly remember a German version of VBA.
• numpad0 1y ago
  > unfortunately our non-native devs have to learn complex words they can't barely pronounce I simultaneously know too little about German and have seen too much horror stories on German that I cannot identify whether this is but a typographical-error or actually pursuant to DIN orthographical standards
• hwj 1y ago
  We're exactly in the same position (FinTech): Translating German into English resulted in code being understood neither by Germans nor by Englishmans :-)
  • bee_rider 1y ago
    Fintech, hmm, can Linus or the Nokia folks understand your code?
• 486sx33 1y ago
  [dead]
• antirez 1y ago
  Maybe you could look into establishing a proper-technical-terminology-direct-literal-translation-enforcement-protocol that uses "-" and translates German words more or less literally. The effect should be very obvious for German speakers, and more obvious than German words to English speaking folks.
  • layer8 1y ago
    This leads to cringy non-idiomatic kf nit nonsensical English though. As a non-native but fluent English speaker, working in projects where people with only basic English proficiency translated the native terms into English by naive dictionary lookup, or sometimes by selecting false friends, is really painful, because the translations give all the wrong signals and connotations in English.
• looping__lui 1y ago
  Totally get where you’re coming from—German can feel like a surgical tool when it comes to precision, especially in law or certain engineering domains where it’s still dominant. But from my (very subjective) experience, that sharpness doesn’t always carry over to areas like machine learning or modern software architecture. Most cutting-edge research and discussion happens in English, and honestly, I find it pretty tough to have a deep technical conversation in German—even with other Germans. The language just doesn’t seem to reflect the latest advancements in those fields. I used to agree with the “German is super precise” sentiment—especially when it came to legal or philosophical stuff. But the more I’ve immersed myself in English, the more I’ve seen how nuanced and expressive it can be too. And ironically, German law often ends up being a case-by-case “interpretation party” anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I still appreciate the poetic weight of words like Müßiggang—there’s real beauty there. But when it comes to actually getting things done or discussing complex, evolving ideas? I’m not sure German gives us much of a practical edge anymore.
  • lucb1e 1y ago
    > I find it pretty tough to have a deep technical conversation in German ...loan words? Dutch doesn't have a word for computer other than computer, SSD is SSD, machine learning is machine learning, WiFi is WiFi (with a 50/50 split on people saying it the english or the dutch way), generative AI is generatieve AI and I don't think anyone would count loaning generative as-is as a typo either (maybe if you work for a publisher with a strict rulebook) And from there you apply the normal grammar. To do stuff on the computer is computering (or, actually, we make verbs with -en so it's actually computeren) and machine learning applications are machinelearning-toepassingen. At least, to me it's normal to mix languages like that. It's also not like we avoid the word fingerspitzengefühl or überhaupt just because they once came from german, or like the english don't throw in a kindergarten or zwischenzug where applicable. It just gets mixed into the existing language
    • looping__lui 1y ago
      I don’t think that comment makes sense in context of the original comment I replied to.
• knvlt 1y ago
  Native German here: In my experience the issue is in most cases not compounds, but the domain language. There are terms that are specific to certain domains and used by everyone to precisely name a certain process. Belegprüfung, Indexpartizipation, Zessionär, etc. Sometimes germans outside of your field of work don’t know these terms either, but those who do all use the same term. If you use english expressions you have to replace a domain term with one of multiple possible translations, making it confusing in many cases. We have the same with translated documentation. Ever read the german version of Azure Docs? I have no clue what they are talking about until i switch to the english version.