0

What's the correct translation for "Get ideas to create objectives"?

Hole dir Ideen um Ziele zu entwickeln.

or

Hole dir Ideen zum Formulieren von Zielen.

And what's the difference in meaning?

Improve this question
6
  • 5
    What does it mean in English?
    – planetmaker
    May 20, 2022 at 16:43
  • The context of the phrase in English is as follows: you are given a list of goals/objectives that you can use or come up with your own goal based on the provided list.
    – user53185
    May 20, 2022 at 17:02
  • 1
    So I am given a few ideas or suggestions or words in order to come up with (my own?) objectives?
    – planetmaker
    May 20, 2022 at 17:09
  • 3
    I'm a native English speaker and I'm also having a hard time understanding the sentence. It reminds me of type of thing you'd see in a management seminar. In any case, this site usually does not do straight translation requests. Also, see choXer's answer for why holen is probably not the right verb here.
    – RDBury
    May 20, 2022 at 19:09
  • 1
    The English sentence is way too broad to understand without more context imho. What action does "get" stand for here? How exactly do you "create objectives"? The existing answers are poking in the fog of vague context.
    – HalvarF
    May 21, 2022 at 9:21

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
2

Mein Vorschlag ist:

Sammle Ideen, um Ziele zu finden.

für

Get ideas to create objectives.

Dagegen gefällt mir

Hole dir Ideen um Ziele zu entwickeln.

weniger gut. Ideen holen - das klingt, als lägen sie irgendwo bereit. Man holt sich was aus dem Kühlschrank. Und "Ziele entwickeln" klingt etwas feierlich/gestelzt, ist aber womöglich gewollt. Ich vermute "objectives" ist Manager- oder Beratersprache und da passt "entwickeln" ziemlich gut, und "goals" wäre umgangssprachlicher.

Hole dir Ideen zum Formulieren von Zielen.

Da liegt die Betonung m.E. zu sehr auf dem Formulieren. Man hat die Ziele schon, aber sucht noch nach dem richtigen Ausdruck?

"Ziele festlegen" wäre noch ein gängiger Terminus, bei dem weniger Schreibtisch mitschwingt.

Improve this answer
1

The difference between "formulate" (formulieren) and "develop" (entwickeln) in this context is not particularly great. "Formulate" sounds more 'technical' to me and involves writing things down (or is more precise). As far as I know, this difference also exists in English.

As you can see here (holen), the meaning of "holen" is not as broad as "get". Without knowing the exact context, I can note that "holen" only makes sense if there is a practical activity associated with it (getting up and walking across the room to pick up a card from the table or similar).

Improve this answer
1
  • The English to get is very broad and I'm tempted to say that the sentence should be rephrased to make the intended meaning clear. But yes, holen sounds wrong, unless you have ideas printed on cards in a stack somewhere, and you have to physically pick them up to read them.
    – RDBury
    May 20, 2022 at 19:19
1

Q: What's the correct translation for "Get ideas to create objectives"?

A: There isn't a single correct translation, since both to get an idea and to create objectives can be translated (as you noted correctly) equivalently with

  • auf eine Idee kommen, eine Idee erhalten, Ideen sammeln, and more
  • Ziele setzen, entwickeln, formulieren, and more.

I'd prefer

Komm auf Ideen, um Ziele zu setzen!

This relies on "auf eine Idee kommen", which is a phraseme, and on "(sich) ein Ziel setzen", which is a phraseme as well. Also, it copies the original's imperative form by lack of a (personal) pronoun. This may however go against the concept of involvement; in that case, I'd go with

Komm auf Ideen, um Dir Ziele zu setzen!

Q: And what's the difference in meaning?

A: The semantic difference between

Hole dir Ideen, um Ziele zu entwickeln. / Komm auf Ideen, um Ziele zu entwickeln.

and

Hole dir Ideen zum Formulieren von Zielen. / Komm auf Ideen zum Formulieren von Zielen.

lies in the semantics of to develop and to formulate, which is minimal in the given context; both refer to the conceptual (thus cognitive) workload of coming up with objectives, goals, targets and the like. Formulate perhaps implies one more step, that is to bring "into form" what was only collected so far; that is, if "develop" would not stress this out as well (I'd say it does, but it may be understood as a bit closer to a mere brainstorming).

The syntactic difference between the use of an infinite clause with um ... zu and the nominalization in zum Formulieren is also negligible for the transportation of what you want to say. The mutual syntactic attention lies in "zu" = (in order) to, leading to the intention of "getting ideas" in the first place, in other words answering why one would "get ideas".

Improve this answer
1

I would translate this as "Finde Ideen zur Zielsetzung" oder "Finde Ideen, um (dir) Ziele zu setzen". The "dir" is optional.

Improve this answer