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Conventions for writing SOPs/manuals with abbreviated form (in German)
ناشر الموضوع: Brent Sørensen
Brent Sørensen
Brent Sørensen  Identity Verified
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Sep 24, 2019

Lately, I've been translating a lot of technical documents from German.
Many segments simply contain abbreviated strings of two or three nouns without any prepositions. It can be difficult to figure out how these words relate to each other. I am often not sure if I am translating the segments correctly.

I've asked myself:
1) Are these documents written by non-native speakers and/or have they been translated from another language?
2) Are the joining words omitted to... See more
Lately, I've been translating a lot of technical documents from German.
Many segments simply contain abbreviated strings of two or three nouns without any prepositions. It can be difficult to figure out how these words relate to each other. I am often not sure if I am translating the segments correctly.

I've asked myself:
1) Are these documents written by non-native speakers and/or have they been translated from another language?
2) Are the joining words omitted to save space? Was the writer lazy? Are the notes only meant to be understood internally?
3) Is there some sort of generally accepted style for writing technical documents. For example, the order of the words indicates how they are related.

If 3) is the case, does anybody know of any resources that I can use to decipher this abbreviated form? ▲ Collapse
 
Erik Freitag
Erik Freitag  Identity Verified
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Examples? Sep 24, 2019

Could you give us some examples?

Alison Jenner
 
Endre Both
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Ask a few KudoZ questions Sep 24, 2019

Technical German can be quite terse, but if you know how to read it, it is clear enough if well-written (which admittedly is often not the case). A few questions should be sufficient to get the hang of it.

With strings of nouns, it's often the genitive article (and the genitive case) that gets left out:
Verkleidung Unterseite Armaturenbrett = Verkleidung der U... See more
Technical German can be quite terse, but if you know how to read it, it is clear enough if well-written (which admittedly is often not the case). A few questions should be sufficient to get the hang of it.

With strings of nouns, it's often the genitive article (and the genitive case) that gets left out:
Verkleidung Unterseite Armaturenbrett = Verkleidung der Unterseite des Armaturenbretts

In English, you'd turn the order around:
dashboard lower panel trim

Unfortunately, many translators and non-natives are oblivious to this difference in word order, which can make parsing of low-quality texts less reliable without context information. ▲ Collapse


Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Brent Sørensen
 
Brent Sørensen
Brent Sørensen  Identity Verified
ألمانيا
Local time: 04:24
عضو (2016)
ألماني إلى أنجليزي
+ ...
بادئ الموضوع
Just what I needed Sep 24, 2019

Thanks, Endre,
This was exactly what I was looking for.
Brent
 


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Conventions for writing SOPs/manuals with abbreviated form (in German)







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