The German Language

German is the native tongue of one of the richest and most developed regions in the world. An official language in the dynamic countries of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Lichtenstein, German is the key to unlocking huge business opportunities. Here are a few things to consider about the German language:

With more than 90 million native speakers, German is the most widely spoken language in Europe.
German is the third most popular foreign language taught worldwide after English and French.
One out of every ten books published worldwide is in German.
German is the seventh most common language of Internet users. With over 8 million Internet domains, Germany’s country domain extension ‘.de’ is second only to the extension ‘.com’.

Although English and German share a common heritage, translating into German poses a distinct set of challenges. Every noun is classified as masculine, feminine or neuter, creating idiosyncrasies like the masculine der Rock (‘skirt’), feminine die Gesundheit (‘health’) and neuter das Mädchen (‘girl’). Even if you know this, do you kennen or wissen it? Then there are the ‘false friends,’ or German words that look similar to English words but have completely different meanings. Forget about giving someone a gift in Germany unless you want to be arrested; you would be slipping them ‘poison’!

Here are some pointers to guide you when first considering a German translation project:

German Language Characteristics

German belongs to the West Germanic group of Indo-European languages, along with English, Dutch and Frisian. So what are some of the characteristics that make German unique?

In addition to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, German includes three vowels with an Umlaut (ä, ö and ü), and the Eszett (ß), which represents ‘ss’.
Nouns are always capitalized
Politeness and deference is expressed by using the formal word Sie for “you,” instead of the informal du.
German is very fond of creating compound words. For example, Geschichte (‘history, story’) and Buch (‘book’) can be combined to form Geschichtenbuch (‘a storybook’) or Geschichtsbuch (‘a history book’).

The German Market

Germany has the fifth largest economy in the world and the largest in Europe. The other German-speaking countries also share some of the world’s highest per-capita income levels. Here are some facts to consider about the German market:

Germany exported over $1.5 trillion worth of goods in 2008, maintaining its title as the number one global export leader.
Two-thirds of the world’s international trade fairs take place in Germany.
Germans are some of the world’s leading travelers, taking nearly three quarters of their vacations in other countries. About 1.2 million Germans visited the United States in 2003, making them the third largest nationality of tourists to the US (after the British and Japanese).

German Translation Text Expansion

Generally, documents translated from English into German require 5-20% more words, depending on the subject material. This is due to the linguistic features of the language. Oftentimes, German words are simply longer than their English equivalents.

Text expansion can create difficulties in document formatting and desktop publishing (DTP) . It may result in a document that is crowded and hard-to-read as more words are forced to fit into the same design. Any documents intended for translation into German should include enough text space to accommodate expansion. Website translation can also be facilitated by a design that allows for flexibility in dealing with text expansion.