How to Translate a Sentence:
Or, why German is really hard
Here is an exercise sentence from Chapter Eight in the textbook I bought to help me learn to translate written German:
Das Zeughaus illustriert das Wesentliche des preußisch-berlinerischen Stils: einen Sinn für Realität findet man hier zusammen mit verschnörkelten Dekorationen.
Das Zeughaus, the gloss at the bottom of my textbook tells me, is a “military storehouse,” which is something that is culturally intrinsic to Berlin and isn’t a word I am likely to find in my dictionary. Illustriert is the regular present tense of the infinitive “to illustrate,” so it probably means “illustrates,” though it could also mean “does illustrate” and “is illustrating.” Das Wesentlich is a nominalization of the adjective “fundamental,” so it could mean “fundamental” as a noun, or “essense.” Des preußisch-berlinerischen Stils is an adjective phrase meaning “of the Prussian-Berlin style,” which I didn’t even have to look up. So the first part of the sentence was pretty straightforward, that is, I could translate it left-to-right. “The military storehouse illlustrates the essence of the Prussian-Berlin style.”
Einen Sinn für Realität means literally “a sense for reality,” but of course in English we would say “a sense of reality.” Findet man is a tricky part. German has a pronoun meaning “one,” which in English sounds formal and awkward: “one finds” isn’t natural, so the typical thing to do is convert the sentence to passive tense. That means that the direct object, the sense of reality, becomes the subject instead of the direct object, i.e. “one finds a sense of reality” becomes “a sense of reality is found.” Hier zusammen means “here” and “together.” German puts descriptive clauses in almost the reverse order of English, although I would tend to stick the word “here” at the beginning of the sentence. Mit verschnörkelten Dekorationen means “with ornate decorations,” and although the adjective was glossed, I would have had to look it up. And German plurals are more likely to end in an N than an S, and the adjective also receives a declinsion, but which doesn’t appear in English.
All together, please. “The military storehouse illustrates the essence of the Prussian-Berlin style: here a sense of reality is found together with ornate decorations.”
Am I right? Here is the textbook’s translation of the sentence.
The “Zeughaus” illustrates the essential features of the Prussian-Berlin style: a feeling for reality can be found here together with ornate decorations.
Well, not quite. They kept “Zeughaus” as it was, since it’s apparently the name of the building. They also made my “essence” into “essential features.” They kept the word “here” where it fell in the original sentence, even though I think a native speaker wouldn’t have said it that way, and they changed my plain “is found” into “can be found.”
Sigh. Are four differences a lot? I don’t know. But it took at least ten minutes to get this far, so I’m going to call it good.
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