Hot answers tagged english-to-german
32
John Doe can mean different things:
As you say, an unidentified corpse. In German you'd go the long way and say something like "eine (noch) nicht identifizierte Leiche" ("a (yet) unidentified corpse"). The Wikipedia article also mentions "N.N." for "Nomen nominandum" which curiously redirects to "Nomen nescio" in the English WP. But I don't know Latin...
A ...
24
When Germans hesitate while speaking, they use the following fill-ins
Äh
Äh(e)m
Also
Mhh / Hm
(Na) Ja
Often they are used in combination.
Ich war gestern auf der .. Ähhh .. Kirmes. (Forget what you want to say)
Und, .. ähm, ja, das ist mir jetzt echt peinlich. (Embarrassing)
Hm, na ja, was soll ich jetzt dazu sagen? (Speechlessness)
...
17
All three options are very common. In my opinion the most used (and maybe just a tick more formal than the other two) is
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
From a translator's point of view the most accurate of Best wishes is
Beste Grüße
Edit
Here's a Google Ngram graph which shows that Mit besten Grüßen was always and is still used in German:
16
I'd say "richten" is more a judicial term (btw not to confuse with "hinrichten" which means "to execute so."). This is what a judge does. I assume you mean "to judge so." in the sense of having prejudices against someone as in
You should not judge people by their appearance.
(from Merriam-Webster)
This would simply be "beurteilen nach":
Man sollte ...
16
No one speaks perfectly so everyone has to buy some time sometimes and the most used tender for this in German are "Ähhhh" or "Ähhm"... Two Germans with a considerable wealth in "Ähhh" are Boris Becker and Edmund Stoiber.
As for the like I'd say that so is quite similar. It also has a notion of comparing, even adults use it sometimes as filler and teens can ...
16
You are right in that "wenn Programmierer gehen" is not a proper translation of that phrase. Your proposed translation is actually ok. However because the word "Programmiererverhältnisse" is quite clunky I'd use the following way:
Für einen Programmierer bin ich recht sozial.
The word "borderline" does exist in German but I only know it from the ...
14
english "to stop" is in german "anhalten" (The server stopped - Der Server hielt an), but in context of a server I would prefere "ausfallen" (Der Server fiel aus).
Identify the server by its name:
english: The server mail.example.org stopped.
german: Der Server mail.example.org fiel aus.
No prepositions needed.
Identify the server by its place:
...
13
You can't translate that figurative expression directly, word by word, into german. But in german, there's a similar expression with (IMHO) identical meaning:
Was würden Sie an meiner Stelle tun?
Was würdest Du an meiner Stelle tun?
It's a shortened form of
Was würden Sie tun, wenn Sie an meiner Stelle wären?
13
Generally, the three "noch" / "noch immer" / "immer noch" are interchangeable without hardly any shift in meaning. "Noch immer" and "immer noch" are entirely synonym.
Using "immer" with "noch" implies either surprise or doubt that the situation continues:
Ich habe noch nicht alle Weihnachtseinkäufe gemacht. (But that's ok, there's still time.)
...
13
Amerikaner
In Germany it is exactly the same as in the United States:
We are Americans Obama's weekly address Jan 15 2011
literally translates to
Wir sind Amerikaner
(this obviously is not true then)
Only if we need to further specify where a person lives we could also say:
Nordamerikaner, US-Amerikaner - North American
Südamerikaner - ...
13
Die Ausstellungsdauer is actually a noun rather than a prepositional phrase, which would refer to the "duration (die Dauer) of the exhibit(ion)". Similarly you could use the verb dauern ("to last/take [time]"), as in "Wie lange dauert die Ausstellung?" ("How long does the exhibit(ion) last/take?").
For what you're asking, and if you'd rather use Messe ...
13
Welcome to GL&U!
Your sentence uses a double infinitive forming the perfect tense in a dependent / subordinate clause. That sounds kind of complicated, but break it down into its smaller parts and then put it back together (I did also find an English page for you that further explains some of these peculiarities).
First, recognize that a subordinate or ...
13
Looking at the larger German Q&A sites and what they are calling themselves, there appears to be no standardized term for it:
gutefrage.net: Die Ratgeber-Community
wer-weiss-was.de: Know-How-Netzwerk
I would simply revert to "Frage-Antwort-Seite" / "Frage-Antwort-Forum" since this is closest to the English Q&A original.
13
Eine Möglichkeit ist
Hab mir's anders überlegt.
oder
Wissen Sie was, [optional hab mir's anders überlegt] ...
auch
Jetzt, wo ich drüber nachdenke, ...
Eine sehr kurze Variante:
Obwohl, [kleine Pause] ach ...
12
I'd probably say
Das ist doch keine Wissenschaft.
or
Das ist doch kein Hexenwerk.
LEO's forums contain a few more suggestions (e.g. here).
I wouldn't use Raketenwissenschaft or rocket science in German except when talking informally to peers of whom I know that they know English well enough.
12
Another possibility for a "neutral" expression would be "Situation" - which has a rather deliberately vague feel to it in German, not unlike "issue" in English :)
Leider konnten wir die von Ihnen beschriebene Save-as-XML-Situation
nicht reproduzieren.
Still, splattne's suggestion sounds best to me, esp. in an IT-related context. (+1 for splattne, ...
12
According to the Wikipedia article, troll originates from the French verb trôler, but also from the Norse word troll.
Let's concentrate on the second one here. A troll is a mythological monster. The German word for Troll is Troll, so there is no difference.
As for the activity of trolling: This is an artificial word created for this purpose, so there is no ...
12
In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Queen Gertrude speaks the following line when Hamlet asks her, "Madam, how like you this play?"
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Nowadays this line is usually misquoted as "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."
"Methinks" today is as obsolete as "doth" (we write "does" now). The only exception is when people ...
12
Apart from the incorrect form of haben, example 1) is correct:
Er hat tanzen dürfen, aber ich habe nicht gedurft.
This is because dürfen is a full verb in the second part of the sentence (in contrast to a modal verb as in the first part of the sentence, where there is an infinitive form (tanzen) attached to it) and therefore is inflected differently. ...
11
It's exactly the same meaning and usage. In fact, the words have been translated literally, the meaning imported into German from English. I don't know about the English connotation, but in German, it can have a negative connotation. It tends to complicate language by forcing statements to be gender-neutral and non-offensive to societal minorities.
Taken ...
11
Originally, "thou" was used if you were addressing a single person, whereas "you" was used for addressing more people. Thou was saved only for intimate or disrespectful uses. So really it was more like "thou" was the same as "du", and "you" was the same as "ihr."
Sources: Wikipedia's article about Thou
11
I do not know what the difference between a task list and a to-do list is, but you can use:
Aufgabenliste
Abarbeitungsliste
Liste der offenen Aufgaben
To-do-Liste (we borrowed that word)
11
Lassen wir mal das "nicht" weg. Diese Verneinung saugt nur unnötig Aufmerksamkeit vom eigentlichen Thema ab. Und aus "zur Arbeit" mache ich "fort", das vereinfacht den Satz auch ein wenig.
Eine einfache Beschreibung, Gegenwart:
Du gehst fort.
Eine Vorhersage über ein Ereignis, das mit Sicherheit in der Zukunft stattfinden wird:
Du wirst ...
11
I'd say
1) ... oder rufen Sie uns unter dieser Nr. an: (phone number)
or
2) ... oder rufen Sie uns an unter (phone number)
or
3) ... oder erreichen Sie uns telefonisch unter (phone number)
I googled quickly and found some official websites (public authorities) saying
4) Telefonisch erreichen Sie uns unter (phone number)
Personally, I ...
10
I would go with
Das ist nicht so kompliziert.
or
Man braucht dafür nicht studiert zu haben.
or
Das ist keine Hexerei.
I've never heard a literal translation of the English idiom.
10
Whenever an unknown person needs a name for administrative purposes the gender and estimated age is used in a hospital emergency room setting:
weiblich, [unbekannt], 30 Jahre
männlich, [unbekannt], 70 Jahre
where [unbekannt] may be omitted.
Another term would be:
Unbekannte [männl./weibl.] Person, ca. 40 Jahre
where männlich or weiblich is ...
10
You could use "Fiasko", "Debakel" or "Katastrophe".
"Pleite" and "Niederlage" have a quite similar meaning, but without that strong sound. "Vernichtende Niederlage" could also be used. Nowadays even "Fail"/"Epic Fail" are used by the younger generation. While these phrases imply responsibility, "Misere" does not.
"Zwickmühle" describes a situation where ...
10
I don't think such simple one-on-one rules exist. In addition to -heit and -keit, there are also -nis, -schaft, -tum and -ung as typical noun endings, creating nouns from both adjectives and verbs. Your examples are very different in German:
Business can be translated as Unternehmen, Angelegenheit, Sache or Pflicht (or many other words). Depending on the ...
10
Häufig wird
freigeben
verwendet, wenn digitale Inhalte (Dokumente, Bilder etc.) für andere explizit zugänglich gemacht werden.
In Windows z. B. wurde der Begriff "(network) share" mit "(Netzwerk-)Freigabe" übersetzt.
Umgangssprachlich werden auch häufig die englischen Begriffe verwendet:
"Hast du die Fotos von der Party echt geshared?!?"
"Ja, ...
10
Frankly speaking, the most common word you say is "adden". If you want to be a bit more formal, or try to avoid the English word, I'd go with "hinzufügen".
The alternative is to use the word "einladen" which means "to invite", or to use the substantive "Einladung".
Adde mich doch bitte in Facebook/Skype.
Kann ich dich zu meiner Freundesliste ...
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