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

The be- prefix is very common in German and can be plonked in front of most verbs or adjectives. It is one of the examples of the useful little bits of German that make it quite concise and practical in many situations, where I am stumped for an English translation.
However, the English way of thinking often simplifies a complicated German sentence, making, on the whole, for a page of German to translate to about 7/8 of a page of English.

I didn't mean to post that yet, but more to come later!

One of the challenges when translating web sites into German is that German words tend to be longer than English ones. You tend to run out of space for the buttons, and the menus at the side can get very squashed.

These foolish things...

Ben

A bit of challenge for translators occurred to me today, for no particular reason:
"The moving stationery van collided with the stationary moving van."

(H'mmm...)

That is brilliant, Plaguesville.

Anyone else get distracted by the news that Tony Blair is meeting the leaders of India and Pakistan at the Nepal Summit?

Which one? K2? Everest? I think we should be told.

Ben

"I've had this great idea, guys. First one to the top gets Kashmir."

Well, this is what bablefish makes of it....

Der bewegliche Briefpapierpackwagen stieß mit dem stationären beweglichen Packwagen zusammen.

and then translates it back as

The mobile writing paper luggage car collided with the stationary mobile luggage car.

Which seems to make sense to me, although I have no idea what the German actually says!

I realise I am at risk of being lynched here given the number of translators / multilingual posters to these threads, but I thought it might be amusing to see what an automated translator made of it and how that would differ from what you peoples would make of it...

That reminds me of the Classic post-Cuban-missile-crisis test of the Hotline/Red-phone, then newly installed installed between Washington and Moscow.

*bear with me if you've heard it, not everyone has*

The Americans typed in: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." and sent it off to the Kremlin computer, which translated it. It was then re-entered in Russian and sent back. The Washington computer translated it as: "The wine needs to be strong because the meat is off."

jwf

In a similar vein 'Out of sight, out of mind' became 'Invisible idiot'



Ben

Theres at least one programme, on Radio 1 I think, where the competion question is a song title translated to another language 9chinese or something) and then translated back and you have to guess the original.

Usually a good way to waste time

Sounds like fun. I would translate the above sentence into proper German, but there's not a lot of point. Unless, of course, your English is not up to knowing the difference between stationery and stationary. This is one mistake I have actually seen in an edited entry, so I know there are some guilty parties somewhere about.

"The moving stationery van collided with the stationary moving van."

Der fahrende Schreibwarenlieferwagen stieß mit dem geparkten Umzugslaster zusammen.

Loses some of the poetry in translation, whether done by hand or machine. The original was quite moving!

Thankyou, one and all, that was the highpoint of my reduced weekend.
Must remember to pay more attention to my random musings.

Yep, even I know the difference between stationery and stationary.
Reminds me of one of those appocryphal stories you get at work, some lad I used to know told one where he was at a new company and was sent to get some more notepads and pens and stuff from Stationery. When he arrived he asked the young lass in the office 'Are you Stationery?' to which she apparently replied something like 'Yes, but I know how to move when the occasion demands it!'

My, what a jocular,witty and entirely unbelievable young lass(urban mythette?).
No chauvinism implied, but how do we know when reported speech just doesn't ring true?
Ever read "I wish I'd said that"?

Like an extreme Irishman, it is just too pat.

Heard the expression "sixes and sevens" on the radio yesterday. Of course, I've heard it before - it's in that song from 'Evita' - but where on earth does it come from?

Nope can't say I have read that.

Please note my use of the word 'apocryphal' (albeit incorrectly spelt). Thankyou.

Personally I can quite believe that something along those lines was said, somewhere sometime and it has been mis-reported ever since. Most likely said by someone fed up with smart-alec comments all day in an attempt to shut said persons up!

According to the quite ludicrously addictive "worldwidewords" site the phrase is very old (C13) and comes from a dice game called "Hazard" where it was particularily difficult to get 5 or 6.
The phrase for this was "To set on cinq or sixe".
I can only presume the sevens came in because "set" sounds like "sept" which is French for 7 (even in euro )

You might say that Ictoan's 'stationery' gag is the basis of 90% of Leslie Nielson's cinematic dialogue.

That sixes and sevens thing about dice sounds a bit odd to me. I'm not 'debunking' your suggestion, just sounds a bit unlikely.

Are we clear on what it means? For me it indicates being confused, disoriented, out of step, and possibly making a mess of something as a result.

Or does it mean something like 'being in conflict, disagreement with someone?

I'm not sure now!

What does anyone else say?

Spiff