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Conventions for writing SOPs/manuals with abbreviated form (in German)
Thread poster: Brent Sørensen
Brent Sørensen Germany Local time: 11:21 Member (2016) German to English + ...
Sep 24, 2019
Lately, I've been translating a lot of technical documents from German. Many segments simply contain abbreviated strings of two or three nouns without any prepositions. It can be difficult to figure out how these words relate to each other. I am often not sure if I am translating the segments correctly.
I've asked myself: 1) Are these documents written by non-native speakers and/or have they been translated from another language? 2) Are the joining words omitted to... See more
Lately, I've been translating a lot of technical documents from German. Many segments simply contain abbreviated strings of two or three nouns without any prepositions. It can be difficult to figure out how these words relate to each other. I am often not sure if I am translating the segments correctly.
I've asked myself: 1) Are these documents written by non-native speakers and/or have they been translated from another language? 2) Are the joining words omitted to save space? Was the writer lazy? Are the notes only meant to be understood internally? 3) Is there some sort of generally accepted style for writing technical documents. For example, the order of the words indicates how they are related.
If 3) is the case, does anybody know of any resources that I can use to decipher this abbreviated form? ▲ Collapse
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Erik Freitag Germany Local time: 11:21 Member (2006) Dutch to German + ...
Examples?
Sep 24, 2019
Could you give us some examples?
Alison Jenner
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Endre Both Germany Local time: 11:21 English to German
Ask a few KudoZ questions
Sep 24, 2019
Technical German can be quite terse, but if you know how to read it, it is clear enough if well-written (which admittedly is often not the case). A few questions should be sufficient to get the hang of it.
With strings of nouns, it's often the genitive article (and the genitive case) that gets left out: Verkleidung Unterseite Armaturenbrett = Verkleidung der U... See more
Technical German can be quite terse, but if you know how to read it, it is clear enough if well-written (which admittedly is often not the case). A few questions should be sufficient to get the hang of it.
With strings of nouns, it's often the genitive article (and the genitive case) that gets left out: Verkleidung Unterseite Armaturenbrett = Verkleidung der Unterseite des Armaturenbretts
In English, you'd turn the order around: dashboard lower panel trim
Unfortunately, many translators and non-natives are oblivious to this difference in word order, which can make parsing of low-quality texts less reliable without context information. ▲ Collapse
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Brent Sørensen
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Brent Sørensen Germany Local time: 11:21 Member (2016) German to English + ...
TOPIC STARTER
Just what I needed
Sep 24, 2019
Thanks, Endre, This was exactly what I was looking for. Brent
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