#untranslatable german phrase

[pomefioredove]

Quick question do you know how to integrate other languages naturally into writings when you're not well versed in that language?

Or just like, some advice to figure out how to make languages you don't speak in sound like Google translate idk if this makes sense.

assuming you mean how to naturally add words/phrases/sentences from other languages in english writing, and not how to write in a different language altogether:

research the language you're using! especially if it's a dialect. google translate is a good tool but it's useless if you have no context. look for reddit results for specific questions on structure/grammar/etc

for integrating it into english, here are some times I use other languages in english settings:

terms of endearment. sometimes a thing I love is not a sweetheart, but een lieveke

untranslatable words. I would rather just say gezellig than use a bunch of english words to explain what that is

SWEARS. everyone in my family does this. recently my mom was yelling "GODVERDOMEEEE!!!" at a german car in traffic

talking to another native speaker

hellos and goodbyes. not everyone does this but I catch myself saying "hallo" and "salukes" a lot

talking to pets/animals

but, of course, this also depends on the character you're writing for. Rook, for example, uses french in a much more forceful/less natural way than a native speaker would

I'm not sure if this advice is any good haha, the only character I ever write other languages for is Rook, and I know French

[raw-law]

Awwh, it's nice to see I've been missed ;) but yeah, good to be back.

....The struggle is real, as for the languages... I'm not an English native, but I feel as if I were, haha. However, things sometimes....need to be said in another language, haven't you noticed how something just ...sounds *better* , sounds right in French, or Spanish, or German, and there's no other *right* way to say it... I wish I knew Japanese, it intrigues me to no end, I only...scratched the surface... (and it is so endearing how you, Light, want to learn Italian, and you, L, often answer with "si". You really didn't think I wouldn't notice that, right?)

--Anon 🍰

L:

hazaahh :}

you're definitely not alone in things "sounding right" in other languages. sometimes things are just expressed better in a different format, even if they're practically the same sentence. communication sure is fickle, isn't it? did you know "huh" is counted as the only universal word, with "coffee" being its closest competitor? makes you wonder if we're all just confused caffeine addicts..

(and i recommend continuing to learn japanese. the sounds are pleasing. oh, and what's anon-bon's native language? i'm curious now.)

.... now you're making me question if i've switched up "yes" with "sí" on here before.. ouh no........

Light:

I get that...languages definitely have their untranslatable phrases. A really simple example is いただきます in Japanese, or 孝顺 in Chinese (which means more than just filial piety).

Isn't that really cool? If I had time, I'd go around learning every single language, but unfortunately I can't.

And, why not? L could teach me Italian if he wished.

[immortalsapphics]

"ich fühl mich verarscht" is the best untranslatable phrase of the german language like i could technically tell you what it means in english but the emotion is held in german and can't be described

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Flake's podcast - Crying /Weinen

podcast on 2023-05-09, the YT link also has the songlist in the description 🌺

'Weinen' this time, translated into english as Crying, but as Flake mentions, Crying can be both the kind with tears and 'shouting'. But he too would translate it as Crying, like at the very start where Flake starts a long 'Cryyyyy Baby' (tee dum dum) 😊 as an introduction by the song by Janis Joplin, he even sings along with Janis's intro for a few notes 😊

Right at the very beginning also an offhand remark, which has nothing to do with the topic, about his friend Paulo back in the old days singing a song in the schoolyard that Flake didn't know (Paulo had all kinds of different albums) and only years later found it which song it was. When they play and record a new song with the band, Flake heard the music so often that he doesn't even need to hear it anymore, because he's got it all in his head, but with Paulo's song he didn't know the musicand couldn't make sense of the song 🌺

Flake's playlist today feels a little shorter than usual, but i think it's because there are several longer songs on it, including, from 0h08 two Rolling Stones songs, and at 0h58, almost traditionally for Flake's podcast, a song by Die Ärzte 'Und ich weine' (Flake mentioned in an earlier podcast that Die Ärzte seem to have a song for every topic he comes up with 😊).

A very untranslatable phrase at 1h24 when he mentions he would like some German artist would make an album with songs just for kids (just like Johnny Cash did, who he plays right before), and says he already has a great bit of potential lyric from his daughter who told him "Sitzt ein Kuckuck auf ein Baum, kommt ein Hai forbei. Der sagt 'Kuckuck' zu dem Kuckuck, der sagt 'Hi' zum Hai" (which indeed has a great ring to it to use in a kid's song). Right after, Flake follows with a quote from 'our guitarist Paul' who said "Ich hab dich so lieb, aus Zeitungsvertrieb" (which i guess might have been 'Zeitvertrieb' (passtime), because now it translates to "I love you a lot as newspaper distribution" 🤔), which Flake thinks is 'Total Geil' as a poem, but he thinks Paul might just have reading an advertising slogan on a truck 😄 (by the way, i can confirm that German trucks often have great slogans on them 😊). And friend Paulo (another mention for him) made a short poem "Mein Name ist 'Na und'. Ich bin nicht ganz gesund" (it sounds weird in translation, so i'll skip it 😄), which Flake thinks it's so great he could almost cry. And so we are back on topic 😊

The duality in the word 'Cry' is shown best through the song by german singer-songwriter Bettina Wegner 'No woman no cry' (at 0h32), and because i really liked it, i found you a version of it on YT

Now i hear you thinking "uhm... notafraidofetcetc...did Flake maybe mention Rammstein a little bit somewhere?" 😊 why yes, he did 😊 After abt 0h23) the song 'Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht' by Drafi Deutscher (in Germany a very well known song), which has the words 'Dam, Dam' as a sort of countervocal, well those words were considered as the title for 'our last album that didn't get a name' (which is obviously the Untitled album, i think Flake forgot for a minute that they published another album after that 🌺 'Letzte' (which is the phrase he uses) can mean Latest and Last, but as we know now it was neither...but i digress). They did use the 'Dam dam' quote in the song 'Puppe' as in 'I tear the head off the doll, dam dam' because they thought it sounded perverse in the Marmor Stein und Eisen song, the used it for the perversion in Puppe. But in the end 'Dam Dam' wasn't used as album title, Flake muses "when i like something, it's a sure sign that 4 or 5 of the others won't like it".

This leads to the next song, which is 'a song by us' that has to do with 'Weinen', namely 'Wilder Wein' (which is interesting that he uses this, usually the translation of 'Wein' in this case is 'Wine', so either he's taking some liberty with the topic, or we've all been translating it wrong) (my guess is the former 😊). This is a song that Till pretty much came up with, as Flake tells us at 0h24, Till mainly makes music to impress women 😄 With 'First Arsch' he played drums, which is fine for concerts, but at parties you rarely have a drumkit at hand. However a piano often is there, so he came up with a small melody played with the left hand (not that Flake means this in a derogatory way, he really likes the song) and just with the white keys, which basically plays itself "you just have to let your fingers twitch a bit". So this is pretty much an 'impress women' song 😄. (The 'pan flute' sound in it, Flake borrowed from the Stephan Remmler song 'Vogel der Nacht', because he liked it and figured, he'd put it in 😊). Little glimpses behind the scenes of how Rammstein songs are made 🥰

🎹

more of my takes on Flake's podcasts

[andromerot]

found this in the book "El idish es también Latinoamérica", edited by Eliahu Toker a couple days ago. im obsessed so im sharing it and translating it

When the Crusades and other aggressive movements pushed a large part of the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine to the east, towards Eastern Europe, the speakers of that primitive Yiddish came into contact with the Slavic languages whose rich folklore, converted to Judaism and incorporated into speech, added to Yiddish an unmistakable flavor, deeply committed to emotions and affections. This particularly popular, tasty and fertile Slavic component - especially Polish, but also Russian, Ukrainian and Czech - was the fourth founding element of modern Yiddish, and the one that ended up clearly differentiating it from German and all its other progenitors. From Slavic Yiddish incorporated palatal sounds (niánie, nanny; liálke, doll); untranslatable interjections (nu, which accepts a hundred different intonations meaning a hundred different things (...)) or affective diminutives (góteniu, little god, not as a diminutive but as an expression of affection, Gott being God in German, and the ending niu, Slavic. Only in Yiddish, through such a conjunction, is this closeness and familiarity with the divine expressed, which is not typical of Hebrew or Romance, much less German). Pages and pages could be filled only on this subject of the spiritual synthesis achieved in Yiddish through the incorporation of slavisms. To exemplify, let's add a few more words, converted from Slavic to Yiddish, and endowed with a particular sound and flavor: iáshtcherke, lizard; kliámke, doorhandle; bobe, grandmother; paskudniák, nasty; katchke, duck; shmate, rag.

To close this reference to the different idiomatic confluences, it is appropriate to point out the intimate fusion, word by word and phrase by phrase, that they achieved in the Yiddish language. An example is the goteniu that we mentioned above; to give a couple more examples: the word shlimazálnik, unfortunate, is the conjunction of shli, a negative particle in German; mazl, luck in Hebrew, and the ending nik, Slavic, which serves to attribute a quality to a person; póierim, peasants, from poier, peasant in German, and Hebrew ending im for the masculine plural; pénimer, faces, where the reverse is true: panim, face in Hebrew and er, Germanic ending for plural. Linguist Max Weinreich used to quote a phrase to show the complexity of this fusion: Nojn bentshn hot der zeide guekóift a séifer (after the blessing, grandfather bought a holy book). Seifer comes from Hebrew; bentshn, from Romance; zeide, from Slavic; nojn, hot, der, guekóift, from Germanic.

[chaoticlinguisticsandmoods]

okay but like as much as i get bat-shit crazy obsessed with things like untranslatable words i am even more in awe and in utter pleasure with untranslatable phrases like “i came up with”

to come up with

like to me that means to have searched in my brain’s airplane-hangar-sized library of deranged thoughts and here’s what i found and taped together onto some thought paper

or maybe it’s like to come to the surface of my brain pool after a deep dive with a certain thought i found near the bottom like here is what i came up with

like i have no idea how i would translate that into french or german and i love that

it also exists the other way around like c’est tiré par les cheveux like i don’t know how to explain that like google will say it’s far fetched but it’s so much more than that it’s just like you have to stretch your brain to understand what they are getting at

[faceglitchsworld]

Yes, exactly! I often want to post in German (oops, does that give away which Mutual I am? But I’m sure you figured that out anyway) but I know most of my followers wouldn’t understand - but there are some phrases that are just untranslatable or don’t carry the same emotion in English!

Oh anon, I can feel you really.

Must admit that I'm curious when my moots decide to post something in their native language because I'm always fascinated about it. If you want an advice from me, you can create a tag for your German posts and tell your followers that they can put that tag on the filtered tags lists, so they'll not be confused.

I do this with my Italian posts or when I ramble in Italian trough my tags. For me it's necessary sometimes expressing something in your native language, especially if you feel a very strong emotion (mostly positive in my case).

Oh, maybe I figured out who you are 🤭

But I'll stay silent 🤭

You can keep being my anon moot if you want 😉

[germanliy]

Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof! common german phrase, lit:life is not a ponyfarm means:not everything in life is nice! learn german! german liy on youtube

[lukewalkwalker]

Hi and welcome to the society against unnecessary and pretentious additions of French or Latin phrases/words in otherwise English academic texts. Today we’ll discuss the insignificance of “ab initio”

[mygreenknittedsweater]

I usually think in english but replace some words like 'please' with french, and if I'm not directly thinking about it I always say 'excuse me' in french when i pass people

multilinguals rb and tag if you think in your native language or not

[team-council-two]

So I wanted to rank some common german greetings for the goofy german medical professional from 15 year old hat game.

5)

Guten Tag/Grüß Gott (Good day/Great God): Basic bitch phrases, wouldn't use them.

4)

Guten Morgen (Good morning): always great to use at evening/night, otherwise the same as before.

3)

Servus/Moin moin (untranslateable): Wrong dialect for the Medic, always use.

2)

Mahlzeit (Meal-time): this greeting is so stupid, like I'm not even eating anything. Why would you say this? Perfect

1)

Was machst DU denn hier!? (What are you doing here?): This isn't common, but it's great. That's his standard greeting.

[stumpyjoepete]

Had a dream that I needed to translate one of those supposedly untranslatable German phrases. Some sort of insult that precluded a response by virtue of some grammatical contradiction that arose when you tried to conjugate a comeback. (Note: awake me doesn't speak any German, and I doubt asleep me is any more knowledgeable.)

Anyhow, I came up with, "We ballin', numbnuts!"

[lavenoon]

30, 33, and 34 for the fanfic writer ask! ❤️

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst?

In reading, I don't actually enjoy angst if it's merciless most of the time! I do enjoy some hope with my pain, please <3 So with content I seek out, it'd be the fluff! For writing? Well, uh, looking at my track record - did I. Did I ever write just pure fluff? With not a hint of conflict? The type to make you put your device down and just giggle for a while over it all? I. I honestly don't think so, whoops Merciless angst I also rarely write (and even when I do I can't really leave it alone and let it remain angsty), but I think I'd honestly be better at angst than I'd be at fluff gfhdjs It just, activates my brain? And I love seeing the reactions it causes - a very interesting ego boost where everyone including me is crying <3 (I still will not promise a Y/N dies scenario, because Y/N I definitely cannot fix and I'm not sure I can handle that) Besides, merciless angst doesn't have to involve death, and I do have other evil thoughts brewing <3 So, for writing, I guess it'd be angst!

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process?

Maybe. Not in a "please ignore all mistakes" way, but in a "please be aware of how often I mix things up" way - please remember English is my second language. To top it off, I learned most of it online, with manga fan translations that were unavailable in German, and on social media, and that makes for rather unorthodox results. Especially with writing - grammar rules differ between English and German, and sometimes I just have to stop and squint and think about which rules I'm applying currently, and if it's the right ones. Or having the perfect word or phrase for something in German - but it's untranslatable. Often enough I write a sentence, in English, that in English makes no sense, but if I literally translated it to German it'd just be a normal sentence. I'm so lost between languages sometimes, I even forget which language I read something in, until I think of a specific phrase from the thing or a context clue that will help me sort it into the German or English basket. Being bilingual is fun, but sometimes I wish I could take my brain out and just make vague, confused, and offended gestures at it until it stops producing nonsense. And perhaps not necessary to know, but a fun fact: I don't write in German, and I'm not sure I'd be any good in it. I very much dislike reading in German these days, and since most things I'm interested in are in English/ have an English original or translation, I go with that! It's a weird situation, honestly, feeling so distanced from my native language, but it's also not big enough of an issue to unpack, and English does have a much wider audience!

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

I'm still very very happy with this little bit from Catbird out of the Bag:

I didn't have a plan, going in, that went beyond "Moon introduces himself and reality smacks him like a brick to the face, he has a quiet, shorter crisis before helping Y/N through theirs". So then I was at that point and Y/N was still so frantic, and I wasn't quite sure what would fix it - but Moon did. It really just hit me, that of course he'd defuse things, because that's his rival, he knows them, they know him, and if he acts a little goofy there's no way they can resist calling him out on it. It's also the first time he uses "dove" for them - the softer, post-reveal pet name he opts for when not on the clock, and I am just so soft for that <3 I still miss this reveal sometimes, I'm glad they all got the happy alternative, and I know that there's only more happiness in their future, too. Happiness that our canon trio will also get, just taking a bit more time! <3

[grayintogreen]

Saw this wandering around my dash, so I decided to do it. You're supposed to tag people, but... I hate tagging people, so HEY YOU. RANDOM WRITER MUTUALS. YOU'RE TAGGED. YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT. (Or not if you don't want to be...)

How many works do you have on AO3?

191. Gonna hit that big 200 before the year is out, I just know it.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,351,277... and like half of that is OUADYA.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

turning wine back into water. (814)

Sunshine Came Softly. (550)

a door shuts and a key turns and the world is lost. (402)

once upon a damn-you-all. (357)

they really love their shades of gray. (310)

a better man (a better monster). (286)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes, because I like engagement and I want people to know how much their comments mean to me!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Honestly, I think the things we gave up for the things we could gain is the worst ending to anything I have ever written, because I did not ADVERTISE it as an angsty ending, so you get kind of hit right in the dick with the implications.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

For an angst monkey, I write a lot of happy endings, but like... on sheer feel-good just thinking about it energy? I think turning wine back into water and shattered stage are my happiest endings.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the strangest one you’ve written?

I do but most of them are kinda sitting in my docs right now, waiting to be written. I think the strangest I've been working on is the Bleach/Sparrow Hill Road one.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No, thank god.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. And I have no idea how to answer that- the kind no one is actually asking for except like five people? Weird stuff.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No. I can't do collaborative stuff like that in writing. It does not work. I have my own schedule and my own way of doing things. I am THAT KID in Middle School and never grew out of it.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I can't do all-time favorite ship. I have too many. I love writing Creecien, Lucigast, and Widomauk though. They're my babies right now.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I refuse to believe any of my WIPs are forever unfinished even when I should accept they are.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. Characterization. Plot.

What are your writing weaknesses?

MOTHAFUCKING DESCRIPTIONS. I get lost in naval gazing and forget to fucking describe where people ARE. and what they are DOING. DAMMIT.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If it's canon. Like I'm not a native German speaker, so I'm more likely to indicate Caleb is speaking Zemnian than to Google Translate something random and have it be wrong, but it's canon that he sprinkles Zemnian words into common phrases. And for my anime fandoms, there's some things that are untranslatable, but it's a very case by case and limited thing.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I think it was Pokemon.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

once upon a damn-you-all has a special place in my heart for so many damn reasons. The level of care and detail are only the tip of the iceberg.

[apicturewithasmile]

what language do you and Huub speak with each other, if you don't mind me asking?

Oh, we speak German 95% of the time and Dutch the other 5%. Usually it's a bit more Dutch when we are in the Netherlands but in our day-to-day communication it's mostly just German. Maybe some words or phrases in Dutch here and there, especially if it's something untranslatable or so tied to Dutch culture that it doesn't make sense to say it in German.

[illgiveyouahint]

I’m not sure if I’m asking a right person for this, but what does hey >na< means? Like what na means? Is it like hey man/boy/girl/dude or is it just like a phrase or something? It’s cute I’m just curious what does it means :))

Hello anon,

ahahahahahahaha yeah that's...I don't think you can really translate it. It's just one of those words that is untranslatable. I'm not german so maybe someone can explain it to you better. It's not a phrase it's just this like fill out word that just sort of like starts a conversation or keeps the conversation going or it reassures or idk...i really don't know how to explain it. So like 

Na? Na. 

is a legitimate conversation that makes complete sense to me and in different context it can mean different things. It can be translated as Hey. Hey. or what's up? not much. or how are you? Good. like idk to me it really feels like untranslatable word (similar to idk doch which is also untranslatable to me) and I'm probably describing it all wrong but that's just how I always saw it.