The Awful German Language (1880)

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 the German compound words are so f*** precise that we are unable to find short matching English translations...unfortunately our non-native devs have to learn complex words they can't barely pronounce :D

Most of the time we try to use English for technical identifiers and German for business langugage, leading to lets say "interesting" code, but it works for us.

Care to share an example or two?

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 :-)

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

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.

Exactly. It’s not like you can even hear the absence of spaces in one or the other. It’s purely a writing choice.