Re: strict German

From: Bernhard Reiter <bernhard_at_intevation.de_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:06:58 +0200
Message-ID: <20001001210658.A16793_at_cheops.usf.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE>


Joey,

On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 08:30:33PM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote:
> Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 03:56:27PM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote:

> > > Thread -> Themenstrang
> > > Mail -> Epost
>
> E-Mail seems to be widely accepted in Germany, it's far better
> undastandable than Epost.

You are right that it would have to be E-Post then anyway. We should go with E-Mail (Though it was only in the running message.)

> > Please make another suggestion then, Joey.
>
> I'd use the english terms rather than strange German misnomers.
> People will be confused even more if they'd have to learn new
> phrases that only a few others will recognize. It does not
> make sense to hack together german words in order to get a
> pure german translation.

I agree with the last sentence.
However there has been a tendency to just use English words for almost everything cool and new in Germany. It is not necessary to make all marketing departments happy in following this rule. I tried to use them German words for some personal experiments and they really feel strange at first. But not for long. We _could_ make up our own words easily and they would not be funny. The problem with some English words is, that they do not bend well to the rules of German gramar.

> > "Subject" and "Thread" are definetly no wide spread German words.

> Then use Betreff for Subject instead of Titel.

Betreff is good also. Though Titel is not bad.

> Btw. why did they accept Index and didn't insit of 'Verzeichnis'?

I am not completly sure they did.

> Being strict Anpassung and Patchlevel are different, Anpassung would
> be patch, thus it should have been Anpassungsstufe or something bad.

True. And it is a hugly word. :>

> Since the press uses Patchlevel, Service Pack and stuff, I'd use the
> english term as well.

I here marketing departments at work here.

> This is another bad one of which I doubt it is useful.
>
> > - "Lese alte Header", /* Reading old headers -STDOUT*/
> > + "Lese alte Köpfe", /* Reading old headers -STDOUT*/
>
> Mail-Koepfe could be acceptable.

True. Mail-Köpfe ist better.

> Capitalizing this would be better, I guess.
>
> > + "schreibe eine neue Nachricht", /* MA New Message -HTML*/
> > + "antworte auf die Nachricht", /* MA Reply -HTML*/

Yes.

> I doubt that this is proper as well:
>
> > - "Mail actions", /* Mail actions (MA) header -HTML*/
> > + "Epost Möglichkeiten", /* Mail actions (MA) header -HTML*/

At least it is not really good.

        Bernhard

> Apart from that, if you concate two German words to a new phrase you'll
> have to use hyphens between the words.

Correct.
Maybe the attached version is acceptable. (The "Durchstöber" Message is just for fun.)

        Bernhard

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Received on Mon 02 Oct 2000 04:18:23 AM GMT

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