Nominalized Infinitives or nouns formed from verbs using the suffix "-ung"

Question

I was reading Sherlock Holmes in German with translations given in English to aid German learners. And I encountered this sentence (which makes complete sense to me):

"Durch Verwendung eines dicken Lexikonbandes stellte er fest, dass das Papier in einer Papiermühle in Böhmen hergestellt worden war."

My book has translated this as:

"By using a thick book of encyclopedias, he discovered that the paper had been made in a paper mill in Bohemia."

What puzzled me is the use of Durch Verwendung instead of using a Nominalized infinitive i.e. Durch Verwenden, since I'm given to understand that 'Durch+Nominalized infinitive' means 'by (doing sth)', while 'Durch Verwendung' sounds more like 'Through the use of..'

Answer 1

Adding "-ung" is a different way of creating a noun from a verb. I think (without being able to substantiate this opinion) this device is more common in German than it is in English.

The English analogue of "Verwendung" is "usage". In English as well as German you can create a noun from "verwenden/to use" in two different ways:

das Verwenden, die Verwendung

the use, the usage

The translation you cited is not an exact but a colloquial one. This is because - although English and German may have some directly analogous constructs - the usage (the connotated meaning, respectively) of these is sometimes slightly different and a certain way of expressing things may well be grammatically correct but somewhat off in the other language.

The problem learning German as an English native speaker (at an advanced level) poses is that such nuances are hard to come by. I am not aware of any exact rules governing these except for the "sounds right - sounds not quite right. Duh!". "Durch Verwenden ..." is such a grammatically correct but not quite right translation. It would be understood by everybody but no native speaker would use it. The only consolation i can offer is that English has its own idiosyncrasies which are equally hard to grasp for Germans learning English, so we are on a par.

Answer 2

The substantives ending -ung are real substantives and easily looked up in a dictionary. I guess, it is typical to prefer them over a substantivized verb for a native speaker. While in this case there is no real difference in meaning, this is probably more an exception than the rule considering examples like Haltung (in the sense of posture or the entirely different attitude, Lüftung in the meaning ventilation system, while lüften is closer to simply opening the windows).

Apart from that, the German translation you quote is not exactly convincing, since Verwendung is a completely blurry noun. If the person looked up a entry in the encyclopedia, it should have said so. With the given Verwendung a couple of other uses are imaginable, like sniffing at the paper of the book, putting it on the floor and stepping on it (or why is dick stated?), ...