History
It was Julius Ceaser in his writings during the 1st century B.C. who referred to the group of people living around the Rhine as the Germānī. The Germānī people spoke the only Germanic language that existed at that time, which would eventually evolve into today’s German language. During the era of the Roman Empire many Latin words entered into this language but underwent phonetic changes so that today their origins are easy to miss—the city of Köln, for example, derives from the Latin word Colonia. German is a member of the West Germanic family of languages which includes English, so it’s not surprising that many German words have entered into our language. Some of them are: Dobermann, masochism and doppelganger and can be found in our Word-of-the-Day blog series.
Translating German
I spoke to our in-house German translator, Rob, who explained a little more about the process of creating a great translation from German.
One of the more challenging aspects of translating German is the abundance of words that can mean many different things in different contexts. One particularly common example is ‘Anlage’, which can have a multitude of definitions, including system, (manufacturing) plant, creation, (document) appendix and asset, to name but a few. It’s the translator’s job to identify which definition applies in the context in question – and, depending on the text, context can often be somewhat sparse – and how to use it appropriately in the English translation. The more information we have about the subject matter of the text, the easier it is to make these decisions.
Advice for clients
It’s good to keep in mind that formatting issues may occur when German is translated into or from another language. For instance, when English is translated into German, the text in the document will expand by around 20% impacting the document’s overall layout. EVS Translations’ in-house desktop publishing teams work with documents to ensure that, as far as possible, the layout of the target document matches that of the original. But this isn’t always easy, so communication with the client, as well as a high level of formatting expertise is key. How flexible is the layout? Could a graphic be moved to accommodate larger text space, or does the font size need to change? The teams at EVS Translations will ask all the right questions to create an attractive, professional-looking document.
EVS Translations’ experience
EVS Translations was founded 25 years ago in Germany and works with 140 of the top 500 companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. When clients come to EVS Translations with a German translation project, they know that they are working with one of the market leaders for this language. They also know this means access to the largest team of in-house translator talent for German.
Over those past 25 years, EVS Translations has worked with a diverse range of German multinational corporations operating within the manufacturing, retail and finance sectors and the many other overseas companies who seek to do business with them.
