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up vote 6 down vote favorite

How do you say "The Swiss do it better" in German?

In the sense of a magazine title or similar.

Possibly a little bit arrogant. ;)

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2  
Ricola popularized "Und wer hat's erfunden? Die Schweizer." but they might own a trademark so better not use that. ;) – musiKk Jun 7 '11 at 8:12
ha! I remember that.. :) – Will Jun 7 '11 at 8:13
+1 because it's true ;) – markus Jun 7 '11 at 13:35
@musiKk: Only use it if you can pronounce it right. – Phira Jun 7 '11 at 18:35

4 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

The direct translation would be "Die Schweizer machen's besser".

If it's supposed to be a bit more formal, you could leave out the contraction and write "Die Schweizer machen es besser".

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danke! now my project title makes sense! – Will Jun 7 '11 at 14:10
Da nich' für, wie man hier oben sagt :-) – Jan Jun 7 '11 at 14:31
machens instead of machen's – Michael Oct 2 '12 at 19:56
@Michael: Please elaborate. I believe "machen's" is correct... – Jan Oct 3 '12 at 16:26
1  
The official german spelling rules say an apostrophe is (in this case) allowed for „Wörter mit Auslassungen, die ohne Kennzeichnung schwer lesbar oder missverständlich sind“ (§96) and you can use an apostrophe „wenn Wörter gesprochener Sprache mit Auslassungen bei schriftlicher Wiedergabe undurchsichtig sind“ (§97). So I guess both versions are correct depending on the construction of the rules. Btw., in writing I would prefer the long version machen es. – Michael Oct 3 '12 at 17:16
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up vote 4 down vote

In addition to the answer of @Jan, you could also use the following:

Die Schweizer könnens besser.

This might be more accurate if you're talking about ability of doing something, whereas Jan's version is more about how something is done.

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up vote 0 down vote

If you want to do this in Swiss German (which is seen more often in print lately, or so it seems to me) you might try

D'Schwitzar machods bessar.

although to my ear it would be more colloquial to say

D'Schwitzar koennads bessar.

or a translation of the usage mentioned above:

Wer had das arfunda? D' Schwitzar.

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I would generally discourage the usage of swiss-german in written sentences, because there is no grammar, it is a purely spoken dialect. Also I would not write the examples, as they appear above, they look wrong to me as swiss person... – Lukas Feb 14 at 7:23
My screen went blank when I scrolled down to this answer. What does it say? – 0xC0000022L Feb 14 at 17:23
up vote 0 down vote

Für einen "arroganten" Magazintitel würde ich sagen

Schweiz ist besser

Allerdings ist das kein gutes Deutsch, macht aber eine gute Überschrift :-)

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1  
Vornehm ausgedrückt: das ist eine sehr freie Übersetzung. – Hackworth Feb 12 at 20:11

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