Lost in translation

[jadesfire]

This is why you should be very careful when emailing in another language:

"...also confidently hoping that our business relationship may become more tense in future"
(emphasis mine)

I'm intrigued. I notice common phrases in people whose first language is French (where the construction is generally much more elaborate than average), German (usually very direct and with better grammar than mine) and Polish (where articles tend to get left off). I'm sure English people do it in other languages - probably word-order-issues, but there'll be others as well (apart from general inability to speak them...)

So what German phrase could have resulted in this? German speakers?

BTW, I'm interested not mocking - I'm immensely grateful that all our suppliers email me in English or I'd never be able to sort anything out...

Comments

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

I think if that's a German speaker he did indeed mean 'more intense' in the sense of 'close', like in 'close friendship'. It's a nice thing to say, yes ^^

[miss-zedem.livejournal.com]

Well, hopefully someone with a better grasp on the nuances of the language than me will come along, but if it helps, straff can mean 'tense', but also 'tighten'. So maybe they meant 'tighter', 'closer'?

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

Definitely lost in translation - I'm German and I checked dictionary website (www.leo.org) where tense is definitely not positive. More intense more likely, but guessing they try to say stronger.

Hope that makes sense, if not please say!

[laurab1.livejournal.com]

< language geek >

I'm intrigued. I notice common phrases in people whose first language is French (where the construction is generally much more elaborate than average)

Yes, French can be show-off and flowery. Lots of French idioms that don't translate directly to another language.

German (usually very direct and with better grammar than mine)

German and its 16 different words for *the*. It's *hard*.

and Polish (where articles tend to get left off).

The Slavic/Eastern European languages don't have articles. The terribly pretty Goran Visnjic, who plays Luka Kovac, on ER, is Croatian. He was *always* missing articles, when his English wasn't brilliant.

< /language geek>

[seraphina_snape]

German (usually very direct and with better grammar than mine)

*g* Well, English might not be the easiest language to learn, but it's definitely less rigid than German.

I'm sure English people do it in other languages - probably word-order-issues

Definitely that; English people (and pretty much everyone else) also mix up the articles - which is understandable since German articles depend on gender and case of their corresponding noun (and with three grammatical genders and four cases singular and plural...well, I can't blame them). It's pretty fascinating, really:

der Ball - nominative m.
des Balles - genitive m.
die Sonne - nominative f.
der Sonne - genitive f. (sun is a female noun in German, but the genitive gives it the masculine article - that's probably the one case that everyone gets wrong a few times.)

~ sera