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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
189 points nalinidash | 1 comments | 16 May 25 04:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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rawbert ◴[16 May 25 06:21 UTC] No.44002326[source]▶
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.

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1. knvlt ◴[16 May 25 18:45 UTC] No.44008646[source]▶
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.