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.

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.

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).

Sure, but again those concepts typically will still have an equivalent way to express them in English. For example, Kindergarten is nursery in en-GB. I'm not entirely sure what the others actually mean, but Bildungsroman is probably "coming-of-age novel" which is a common literary genre.

The biggest challenge I've had when writing multilingual user interfaces aren't lacking a way to translate, but just practical issues like dynamic string construction or where the structure of the UI somehow doesn't work in another language, or when a given string is used in multiple parts of the app in the English version, but the non-English versions need different strings in different places[0], or just where an English single word translates into a whole sentence (or vice versa).

[0] For example some languages don't have a commonly used word that means "limb" - i.e. arm _or_ leg. A bit niche, but if you're doing something medical-related it can cause issues.

> coming-of-age novel"

Technically it is correct, but in doing that you lose the essence of the word “roman” and of the whole influence French culture had over the whole of Europe until not that long ago, including in Germany. It is in these cases where it is quite obvious that Britain was an island at the edge of Europe, culturally and not only.

Your objection to translating "Roman" as "novel" seems to be that Roman is closer to the French word for novel than "novel" in English is? But this seems to be more an objection to English using the word "novel" instead of something closer to the modern French term, and not actually an objection related to the translation.

This seems like a slightly strange objection to me; I would have thought the actual semantic problem lies with "Bildung", in that a Bildungsroman generally involves some kind of learning/development/improvement, whereas a coming-of-age novel does not necessarily involve this.

> It is in these cases where it is quite obvious that Britain was an island at the edge of Europe, culturally and not only.

I mean this is a very weird claim, which assumes that Europe is culturally homogenous (e.g. I think you will find that Britain and France are culturally closer than France and Slovenia).