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I have employed a translator to translate a novel to German. A character in the book has the ability to "wall-crawl" a la Spiderman. She is having a hard time translating the term, for reasons that I don't really understand.

Translator: Hello Jim, I have a small translation conflict. Normally “wall climbing” is translated as “ wand krabbeln”. I thought that “ mauerkriechen” would fit, but I'm not so sure anymore. Possibly “ wand kriechen” or “wand klettern” would also work, but all three sound very strange in German.

Me: I assume you're talking about the "wall crawling" in chapter 4. He's basically doing what Spiderman does (moving on walls using his hands and feet), so use whatever term you would use for Spiderman.

Translator: Hi Jim, yes I know you mean the Spiderman one. The problem is that we can't package the ability to “Wände hoch klettern” as a noun without it sounding horrible.

Any thoughts on how to translate "wall-crawling"?

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    As we don't have any context and English can be pretty ambiguous - are we talking abpout a noun, a verb or an adjective? (And assuming your translator is a trained professional, you could take her reply as a hint that a straightforward translation may be a problem - my gut feeling agrees.)
    – Stephie
    Commented Jun 14 at 16:08
  • @Stephie It is used as a noun. I am sure that my translator is correct that it is problematic, but she is asking for my input on how I want to handle it. I don't know enough to give her useful input.
    – Jim Clay
    Commented Jun 14 at 18:22

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I played a Spider-Man game back in the day in German and the translation they used to refer to him was "Wand-krabbler". However as noted, trying to translate the ability with two words always comes out as sounding horrible in German.

Just be a more liberal with your translation and say something like the below:

  • Sie hat die Fähigkeit Wände hochzukriechen wie eine Spinne.
  • Ihre Hände haften an Wänden und sie kann sich mühelos daran entlang bewegen.
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