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

PH: Cack-handed translations. If you want to translate Bürgermeister into English, call it a "mayor", or something. Not a Burgomaster - What on Earth is a burgomaster?

It's a mayor.

Exactly!

If you want to translate Bürgermeister into English, knock yerself out. But do the job *right*. Don't just mess about with the vowels so that it looks less foreign but turns into a word nobody uses in English except when referring to Bürgermeisters.

It seems to be a valid translation actually, and possibly, in some contexts, more precise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgomaster

It's a title that doesn't exist in English. So if you are going to translate it, find the English equivalent - that's where the idea of "interpretation" comes in.

Otherwise, just use the word from the source language.

Chambers says it exists:
http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?query=burgomaster

We have the same in French ('bourgmestre'). In the right context it is perfectly fine.

In reality, I agree that just taking the foreign word is often sloppy translation. "But no word in our language captures all the meanings and nuances of the original", they say. Well, if you don't want to lose anything, read the text in the original, I say.

No, I think they *should* use the word in the original if there isn't an English equivalent. Not just make up a more English-sounding version of the original word that isn't used anywhere in the English-speaking world.

Hmm... I don't see a problem using "the German states" instead of "the German lander", even though 'states' would fail to reflect the exact meaning and institutions and whatnots attached to the German federal system.

Note: this is actually a translated version of a PH in French. Some insist to use 'les länder Allemands' instead of, say, 'les provinces Allemandes'. I do not see what this brings, except possibly in technical works (dunno, PhD in Germanistics or something).

Don't get me started on this one. Fortunately most mistranslations only cause hilarity - I am not aware of any tragic accidents as such due to bad translation.

But I do have some qualms about translating "Länder" as State or Province. While they do have a similar status to a US-American State, but not quite, I don't think that a "Province" covers the political aspect of what a "Bundesland" is adequately. "Federal State" is perhaps more accurate for English. Could you say something like that?

PS - just asked my husband how he translates Bundesland into French and he came out with "Le Land" and "Les Länder" like a shot.

Ho hum.

But why should the United Staes's system be relevant anyway? Why not say 'province', where it is quite clear that in context of Germany it means whatever sort the Germans have there? (Here I mean the French 'province'. 'Federal state' is perfectly fine.) It's like presidents, in different countries they do different things, and we still use the same word.

But there we go: historians and civilisationists (?) never ask my opinion on terminology. This never ceases to baffle me

... and indeed, the 'some insist' which I had written before is misleading: it is indeed, the official word, and not just some rare eccentricity.

Eccentric pencils.

That is, pencils where the lead isn't centred within the wood. When you try to sharpen them, you end up with a pointy piece of wood with a graphite oval positioned slightly downhill to one side.

Handy for jabbing stationers with, though.

Investigative journalists.

Sort of similar to the Burgomeister problem -

I live in England.

Not Allemagne, or Angleterre...

If I meet a Frenchman called Pierre, I don't call him Peter, so why should my country's name be changed...?

Or APhrodite instead of 'Afrotheety'?

I think that was because of what people did in older times. Even proper names were sort of translated (transliterated?), like Léonard de Vinci, or Neper (French for Napier), and many more examples.

Nowadays it is more customary to take the original name and keep it as is (within limits of possibility).

Maybe.

Moonhogg, do you say "Germany" or "Deutschland"?

(I've always liked the train ride from Germany to Belgium where every town of a certain age has three names - Köln, Cologne, Keulen, Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, Aken, Lüttich, Liège, Luik, Brüssel, Bruxelles, Brussel, and so forth. )

Lille and Rijsel?

Also, it seems that no two countries* have a similar word for Germany.

* gross over-exaggeration.

That's because Germany is a relatively new invention