Welcome again to my latest article on mistakes I have seen in the last month. See here for last month’s article.
What I want to concentrate on today is a few words and phrases which are used differently in English from the way they are used in German. Not just false friends, but what I might refer to as unreliable translations. There are plenty of these to choose from, and I have already mentioned one or two in the past, but here I shall take a small selection that I have come across recently.
If you don’t know what I mean, think of the German verb gehen and compare it with the English to go. Although it might look as if they translate directly, this is not the case. In German gehen is used for movement on foot, but not when any mode of transport is used. Thus, if you talk about going home and use gehen, it will be assumed that you are walking. Otherwise you need to use fahren. In English you can go on foot, by car, by bus, by plane etc., and will generally only say you are driving if you are in a car – it is the bus driver who drives the bus, not the passengers – and we also ride a motorbike or a bicycle, where again in German fahren is used in these cases, too.
Here is an example that refers to a motorbike:
German: Das Motorrad hat keine Batterie und wurde seit 20 Jahren nicht gestartet und nicht gefahren.
The translation given was:
English: The motorcycle has no battery and hasn't been started nor driven in 20 years.
But here driven should be replaced with ridden.
So, if you see fahren in a German text, do not automatically translate it as drive. As always, look at the context.
I recently came across a text that referred to Kollegen or Kolleginnen. The obvious translation is colleague. But again, this one depends upon the context in which the word is used. In English, it is used pretty much exclusively when referring to work colleagues, and also only to people who are roughly equals. So in the following sentence:
German: Es häufen sich Berichte bei mir dass es mit den Abfahrt Kontrollen vor Betriebsaufnahme bei einigen Kollegen/innen nicht so gut klappt...
while it is clear that this is a memo addressed to people in a working environment, it is obviously written by a manager or supervisor to his or her staff, not to people on an equal level, meaning that the translation of colleagues is inappropriate here. The translation delivered read:
English: I keep getting reports that departure checks are not going so well with some colleagues…
This needed rephrasing, and my suggestion was:
I keep getting reports that some staff are not carrying out proper departure checks...
In this case personnel or employees could also have been used instead of staff, but the use of colleagues was not appropriate.
The word colleague is, as I have already said, normally confined to use in connection with work, so if a German text contains either Kollege(n) or Kollegin(nen) in a non-work context, then find an appropriate alternative. For example, friend(s), mate(s), companion(s), fellow member(s) etc.
Another word, or phrase, that cannot always be translated literally is teilweise or zum Teil. The literal translation is partly, but this doesn’t always work, for instance in a sentence like the following:
German: [Firmenname] schlägt zum Teil vernünftige Versandkostenmöglichkeiten vor oder Versandmöglichkeiten vor…
The translation supplied was:
English: [Company name] suggests partly reasonable shipping costs or shipping options…
Since the costs or options could not all be described as partly reasonable, my suggestion was:
Some of the shipping costs and shipping options [company name] suggests are reasonable...
It is often the case when, for instance, a group of people are referred to, that the above option is correct instead of partly. An example is if there is a group of women, some of whom are pregnant, the group as a whole cannot be described as partly pregnant! Some of them are, some of them are not. So bear this in mind if you come across this word or phrase in a translation.
Another issue that is not confined to one particular word is when something that is not required in German is literally translated, but it needs something in English to complete it. Such as this:
German: Als der Artikel dann verkauft war, wurde diese Größe nicht mehr angeboten, sondern nur eine deutlich größere.
The translation was:
English: When the item was then sold, this size was no longer offered, but only a much larger.
However, in English something is missing after larger. It would work like this:
When the item was then sold, this size was no longer offered, but only a much larger one.
or like this:
When the item was then sold, this size was no longer offered, but only a much larger size.
This is the case with many examples. If a friend is ill, you might say in German:
Du arme!
and in English:
You poor thing!
Don’t forget in these cases to add “one”, “thing” or whatever is appropriate to the particular text.
To finish off with a couple of topical examples, I often see the German Corona translated into English as Corona or corona. Please bear in mind that English speakers refer to the coronavirus, Covid or Covid-19. As my brother (who speaks no German) commented to me “Corona is a beer. Nobody uses that for Covid”. And the German Home Office is not used in the same way in English. People say they are working at home. They might, possibly, say they have a home office – the room in which they work – although in GB English, the Home Office is a government department, so it is not used so much.
Until next time, and please do comment or ask questions, if only to let me know you are reading these articles!
14 comments
Hi Sarah, thank you for another interesting article!
Thanks a lot for all the interesting articles so far, Sarah!
One small correction, if I may:
In my experience, that's not always the case. "Ich geh / wir gehn dann nach Hause", for example, does not necessarily imply walking and might even be a bit more common than saying "Wir fahrn dann nach Hause" even when going by car. An even more clear cut case would be "Wir gehn dann", where "gehen" simply means "leaving". Interestingly, "wir fahrn dann" as an equivalent sentence sounds better to me than "Wir fahrn dann nach Hause", but take that with a grain of salt.
So basically, anywhere where the emphasis is on "leaving", "gehen" is a valid option, at least in my opinion.
If, on the other hand, someone asks for example if a student is going home to visit their parents over the holidays, then "fahren" would be the much better choice, but even then I probably wouldn't bat an eye if someone used "gehen".
Hi Chris, and thank you for your comments.
While I agree with you that, in some cases, gehen might be used, especially in conversation, technically fahren is correct and should normally be used in a translation.
I would indeed say to someone "Ich gehe Enkaufen" despite the fact that I am going by car, but you cannot use gehen in all cases. When I was first in Germany and still learning the language, I said to someone "Ich gehe Heim" and they laughed at me, pointing out that it was 17 kilometres and I wasn't going to walk there, was I? They were teaching me to speak proper German, which is what I look for in a translation.
There may even be regional differences* (for instance in my part of the world we are actually more likely to say "Ich geh Einkaufen" or "Ich geh Heim", while your examples use "Gehn" und "Fahrn"). For this reason, it is recommended that translators use the correct words in order to remain unambiguous. I would, of course, cut more slack for an informal text than a formal one.
But in this case, of course, I am looking at translations into English rather than into German, so my point is more that while the German text might use fahren, in many cases it is incorrect to translate this into drive in English. An example of this is when my German then OH was going to Berlin I asked him "Are you driving there?" - meaning, as I am English, was he taking his car? While his English was pretty good, he tended to translate directly and said "Yes. I'm driving by train". So what translators need to be aware of is that is is normal to say in English that we are going, regardless of how, but usually we only drive in a car. And if I say "I am driving" then I am generally the person behind the steering wheel. The only person who could be said to be driving a train is the train driver, and it would sound very odd to say you were driving by boat or plane.
* Speaking of regional differences, I live in the old East Germany, where if you say the time is "Halb zehn" you mean "Half past nine". Which very nearly made me miss a plane from Frankfurt Airport when I forgot that they tell the time differently in the West! Which underlines the need to remain unambiguous.
I hope you agree with me, but if you are actually translating into German, don't worry. I wouldn't be reviewing your translation anyway.
No worries, this isn't about review scores and I think we're agreed in general. It sounds like I might disagree with the person who corrected you back then, but I don't know the exact wording/emphasis/situation and it's also definitely true that there are regional differences.
To be honest, I'm not even aware of any difference regarding "halb zehn", so I would get in trouble, there, too, but I know that for example "viertel/dreiviertel zehn" (meaning 9:15/9:45 in the south) often causes confusion.
In my experience, "gehen" is always "walking", even if you are only walking out of a situation ("ich gehe jetzt"). If somebody says "Ich gehe heim.", that's definitely a tell for a person with English as a mother tongue ;-)
Regarding "halb zehn": I grew up in Eastern Germany and am now living in Hamburg, and "halb zehn" is used on both sides of the former border, at least in the North.
Thank you, Heike, for your confirmation.
As far as the time is concerned, I asked for an alarm call in a hotel at "dreiviertal fünf" and nearly got the call at a quarter to six, but for the fact that the alert receptionist queried the time I meant. I haven't tried "halb zehn" or similar in the West, so I don't know exactly where which option is used. It certainly confused me at the start.
True, we used to say "dreiviertel fünf" in Germany for a quarter to six.
In Mecklenburg, I mean.
Sorry, I'm getting confused myself "dreiviertel fünf" must be a quarter to five. I havn't heard this kind of usage for such a long time!
And this is why I could have missed my flight!
:-)
Interesting. That might indeed be a regional difference, then, because in that case, "gehen" pretty clearly means "leaving" to me, and doesn't necessarily indicate any special mode of movement (granted that in most cases the first mode of movement will be walking, even if you then get in your car or on a bus). And I'd say the same is true for Standard German.
Well, I probably don't need to point this out, but I'm German, too, so I have a hard time leaving that statement unchallenged (in more than one way, although I don't want to imply that all Germans are necessarily "Besserwisser" like me). The only thing that would strike me as slightly odd in spoken language, which again might be a regional difference, would be a pronounced second "e" in "gehe", which might put an unusual emphasis on this word, leading to a possible misunderstanding. As a crosscheck, "Ich fahre heim" doesn't sound more natural to me. If, on the other hand, a guy gets up (slams the table / raises his hand etc.) and pronounces "Ich geh heim", I would not assume for a minute they aren't a native, even if they are definitely going by car.
Die Lösung wäre vielleicht, einfach zu sagen: Ich hau jetzt ab ;-)
Einverstanden! ;-)