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"You need scalable enterprise cloud solutions for digital business processes while maintaining complete data integrity?" Nitpicking here, but my god, can Germa
by andrew_eit 4y ago
"You need scalable enterprise cloud solutions for digital business processes while maintaining complete data integrity?"
Nitpicking here, but my god, can German companies/universities/organizations please start paying for native English speakers to do their copy-writing and STOP translating directly from German?
It's "Do you need". Not "You need..."
This is the typical translation of the German marketing "Du brauchst <blah>?" or "Du bist ein <blah>? Dann...". I see pattern this all the time, such as "You are a student who wants to work on innovating projects? Then apply...".
This may sound like a rant, but I genuinely think these little details would go a long way to actually showing that the German economy does have some sort of international mindset. This persistence in sticking to these wrong ways just makes me think that 'OK this is another conservative old-school minded German company trying to play unicorn'. If there's no attention to detail or care for the little things on your front-page marketing website - your first contact with your customer - it just leaves me with a bad feeling about the parts I don't see.
I don't know why it frustrates me enough to write a comment in the middle of the day, I guess I really can't understand how global German corporations still, as a rule all make this same error, which I suspect is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger symptom of not wanting to think outside/beyond the DACH bubble. And I feel a sense of sadness that such a country with great prospects just drags its feet lazily into the the future.
Edit: I also see this all the time in Email correspondence, you can immediately tell if a person is a native German speaker because they don't capitalize the first letter in an English email after "Dear X, we are writing <blah>" (which would be 100% correct in German, but somehow no one teaches this in English classes in Germany that in English it is capitalized). For a country that loves rules, this drives me mad.
Edit2: This is definitely a rant and it triggered me emotionally for some odd reason. I concede that my interpretation is quite exaggerated, so please do excuse me! I'll leave the comment however because I'm curious to know whether any others feel the same way.
Edit3: I will also say that translating between German and English is hard as there are some fundamental differences in their structure. There are very colloquial ways to say or not say certain things. That is why native speakers are essential for such things.
Edit4: Please take this comment with a pinch of salt. This is the rant of an fatigued expat who decided to blow some off steam about the oddities of their host country that drive them bananas. For posterity, I will say there at least 10 amazing wonderful things about German culture that I love, for each odd cultural thing. But you know, at some point when you see something for the umpteenth time, something snaps inside of you and it all comes out, especially on a mid-week day like a Wednesday.
- doppioandante 4y agoAs a student of both German and English, this mistake looks weird to me, as you are supposed to start the question with the verb in German (Brauchst du ...?), and this acts as a pretty good reminder to translate the question with the do in English.
- dmurray 4y agoAgreed, as a poor student of German, I'd say "Brauchst du...?" is correct and your German 101 teacher will mark you down for anything else. "Du brauchst...?" is informal, and OK in advertising copy, but "You need...?" in English is an even lower, more informal register than that.
- FabHK 4y agoAgreed, it strikes me not as particularly German bad English, but generic bad English. One sees that particular bad construction all the time.
- tpush 4y agoPutting the verb second is pretty common in German advertisement, not really unusual.
- tokai 4y agoYou are talking up an 'international mindset', but what you are writing here goes against that. They are not writing native english. They are writing ESL. A true international mindset is accepting that the english the people of the world write to each other is not the same english as british people speak. Would you also have corrected it if had been text written by Nigerians or others that use a creole or dialect of english?
- DonHopkins 4y agoCustomers have hunger for German copy-writing!
- FabHK 4y agoZe money goes into ze technologie, nicht into ze marketing, jawohl!