h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

die Katze aus dem Sack lassen

-

let the cat of the bag

This shall be a collection of german and english proverbs with translations and transfer in both languages.

Feel free to contribute, no matter if english or german (always some translation for the mods ... as good as possible)!

AXR

Not exactly what I had thought of, but here we go

Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund


The early bird catches the worm

The morning hour has gold in its mouth

der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm

(literal translations as well, I think)

Alle Anfang ist schwer. every beginning is difficult.

Well begun's half done. Wohl begonnen ist halb gemacht. (or something like that!)

I think the German equivalent is : Frisch gewagt ist halb gewonnen ( which LEO translates as : Nothing ventured, nothing gained.)

Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr

What young Hans oesn't learn, he'll never learn when he's older

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

Man kann einem alten Hund keine neuen Kunststücke beibringen

Maybe we should post an L for literal translation, and an a for according proverb ? otherwise it could get too confusing - nonegerman speakers will not know that we don't say :Man kann einem alten Hund keine neuen Kunststücke beibringen

And really, we only *have* to literally translate the German ones, anyone posting here should be able to figure out the English on their own.

Sounds good

so is that how we should do it then?

It's certainly worth a try

Alright - that should give you all you need for truning it into an entry, although we should probably organise that roughly by categories.

A stitch in time saves nine. Don't know a German equivalent.

(Actually, I'm terrible at proverbs. I just wanted to post in order to subscribe to this conversation.)

That's clever thinking.
A stitch in time saves nine : L : Ein Stich zur rechten Zeit erspart neun ( andere Stiche)
My book of idioms gives the german equivalent as : was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen ( don't postpone things you can get done today)

There's an English expression like that, too: Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Der Spatz in der Hand ist besser als die Taube auf dem Dach.

The sparrow in the hand is better than the dove on the roof.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. (Ein Vogel in der Hand ist zwei wert, die im Gebusch sitzen.)

Was der Bauer nicht kennt isst er nicht.

The farmer doesn't eat things he doesn't know.

we usually put a "fr" in front of "isst"...

That's what I thought!

I can't think of an English one for that, though.

There's 'buying a pig in a poke', which is 'eine Katze im Sack kaufen', but that's not a proverb.