The German language broke my website

Former QA from Germany here - some international companies supposedly develop their UI in German first because after that most other translations will fit ;)<p>Though, that doesn&#x27;t help with bad translations. I often had a hard time explaining to my American business colleagues that just because I&#x27;m a native German speaker doesn&#x27;t mean I will be good at translate their strings at 5pm so they could get out their launch... +1 for a professional translations!

As a German, I can tell you the problem is that none of these translations are common here, as the whole concept of a speed bump is something entirely ungerman. In fact the first time I&#x27;ve ever seen them was in Mexico, and we were joking that there isn&#x27;t even a word for it in Germany.<p>Sure, you could translate it as Bremsschwelle, but I bet your metaphor would confuse most people.

that&#x27;s a common issue. I worked on a Japanese product where most of the words were 2 characters and they had made horizontal menus that fit 5 buttons across (mobile). You can imagine that didn&#x27;t work with anything other than Chinese. Yea, they had to redsign.<p><pre><code> +---------------------------+ |[発生][保存][設定][情報][終了]| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +---------------------------+</code></pre>

As a native German speaker I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of the listed words except Bremsschwelle. Most of them are weird regional slang terms that won’t mean anything to most people, no need to overthink it that much.

And that kids is why we translator is a profession (and not an algorithm). AI is attempting itself on it, but is at least three steps away from it (finding a really suitable word, rewriting the whole paragraph to fit this word contextually, considering the whole article to make sense).<p>Same as with code right now.

Speed bumps? Oh! You mean <i>speed humps or sleeping policemen or speed tables or traffic thresholds or speed cushions or rumble strips or…</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Speed_bump" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Speed_bump</a>

&quot;...even AI doesn&#x27;t work well enough.&quot; He sounds surprised. He thinks this is an outlier. He hasn&#x27;t been paying attention.

The German language demands a more precise and sober style, whereas English tolerates more sloppy expressions. One common technique to work around that is to just use English terms when there is no catchy German one. In German marketing, this is done all the time. So in your case, you are fine sticking to speed bump.<p>Btw: my favorite word for speed bump is the Dutch &quot;drempel&quot;. It is quite onomatopoetic. My favorite term for speed bumps in German comes from Comedian Helge Schneider. He calls them &quot;Teerwülste&quot; (tar bulges). I don&#x27;t think you find it being used, but it fits the German style very well as it is precise and sober.

I&#x27;m German myself. To me this looks like a category of problem where you can no longer translate the word in the literal sense, because chances are low that the consumer understands the word (&quot;Bremsschwelle&quot; or whatever you end up picking).<p>Wouldn&#x27;t it make sense to rather think of a completely different analogy? One that is really well-known by the target audience? From what I understand, you are building an app that inhibits people from doomscrolling. That is a well-established &quot;German&quot; word, too. Using that, people immediately understand what you mean, rather than trying to follow a broken analogy.

Maybe make your layouts more flexible. There’s no reason in the speed bump example, why the word could not be broken into another line.

&gt; even AI doesn’t work well<p>Why would you think it would?! Do people actually expect AI to be accurate now? Jesus christ...

I wish sites would stop automated translation without even cursory proofreading.<p>Although sometimes it can be hilarious: one website translated &quot;Big Ass Fans&quot; into my native language as &quot;Fans (as in people) of a big ass (as in body part)&quot;.

Do you know the secret?<p>Use the title of the Wikipedia page in the chosen language<p>In this case it&#x27;s Bremsschwelle

Bodenschwelle is used, at least it’s common in Austria.

Surely this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of German’s agglutinative nature and come up with your own?<p>Handyschwelle?<p>Or more formally: Mobiltelefonbremsschwelle?