Like-Blog
Presenting you the most interesting translation solutions
Why Like-Blog? Now, first of all, this blog is a blog that you should like (and read regularly) – at least, if you are interested in translation. Then, the topic discussed here is one in which the meaningful likeness between a text and its translation in the language pair English-German plays a key role. On this page, I will take a close look at some interesting translation solutions that I have come across in the course of my work as a translator and translation scholar.
A translation solution is only as good as the arguments that support it. This means that any translation criticism, whether positive or negative, needs to be justified. The quality of a translation solution shows only when we compare it to other possible translation solutions in a given translation situation. Therefore, a translation critic should not only say why a translation solution is bad, but also demonstrate what a better solution might look like. I will try to stick to these principles of translation criticism. So if you have any questions regarding my line of argument or if you disagree, please, let me know your opinion by phone at +49 4171 6086525 or by e-mail to bittner@businessenglish-hamburg.de. So much for the introduction. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this blog!
Apple, Google, and Facebook (February 2023)
In English, there is a word that can be used to simplify certain sentence structures. German is not without suitable translations for this word, but they are not as suitable as the English word for expressing a given fact in a syntactically concise way. This will become obvious in the translation example, below. Do you have an idea, which English word is crucial, here?
The following sentence has been taken from “Who will rule the new Internet” by Josh Quittner (TIME, 4 June 2008): “Apple, Google and Facebook are, respectively, an icon from the pioneering days of personal computers; the biggest, most profitable company yet born on the Web; and a feisty upstart whose name is synonymous with the current migration to social networks.”
The translation ran: “Apple, Google und Facebook sind jeweils ein Symbol der frühen, bahnbrechenden Tage des PCs; die größten, profitabelsten Firmen, die bis jetzt aus dem Internet hervorgegangen sind; angriffslustige Emporkömmlinge, deren Namen synonym mit der momentanen Migration zu sozialen Netzwerken gebraucht wird.”
Already the plural forms “Firmen” and “Emporkömmlinge” show that the translator did not quite understand the sentence structure of the English original. The reason for this lies in a failure to properly account for the function of the adverb “respectively”, by which the three different parts of the subject complement are matched to the three different parts of the subject. As the German equivalents “jeweils” and “beziehungsweise” do not normally have this matching function (or have it only in a very restrictive way), the translator should go for a different syntax. For example: Während Apple ein Symbol der frühen, bahnbrechenden Tage des PC ist und Google die größte und profitabelste Firma, die das Internet bis jetzt hervorgebracht hat, ist Facebook ein aggressiver Emporkömmling, dessen Name als Synonym für die derzeitige Migration zu sozialen Netzwerken gelten kann.