Wikipedia:Translating German Wikipedia

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

The following guidelines are intended to assist editors in Translating German Wikipedia articles for English Wikipedia.

Before starting a translation, editors should familiarise themselves with the guidance Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions, which particularly covers the consistent and accurate naming of places, geographical features like mountains, rivers and glaciers, and man-made features like bridges, tunnels and castles.

German Wikipedia requires fewer references than English Wikipedia has come to require, and is more accepting of articles with few or no footnotes but a list of sources or external links. Especially when creating a new article on English Wikipedia by translating, but also when expanding by translating, it is advisable to add footnotes; often this can be done by consulting listed sources or external links and creating footnotes to them on points that they support. But it may require additional research to satisfy English Wikipedia verifiability requirements; the German Wikipedia article, like English Wikipedia articles, does not itself count as a reliable source. (See "Unsourced content" below.)

Keep in mind that translation is more an art than a science. A phrase in one language might not be expressed easily in another. In general, we seek the best equivalent translation (answering the question, "How would we say that in English?"), rather than demand a literal translation.

Format issues

Typesetting

Alphabet: Keep a list of the German Sonderzeichen (alternate characters) to copy and paste: Ä ä Ö ö ß Ü ü. Alternatively you can use the pull-down menu of Latin characters provided by Mediawiki: click on the desired letter. You can also use the option key (on a Mac) or the alt key (on a PC).
All German words in English text should be set in italics, except those that have entered the English language as loan words (such as "zeitgeist" and "gestalt"). This is best done with the {{lang}} template, for the benefit of screen readers.

Interwikis

Language links in the left-side sidebar are provided via Wikidata (as by clicking the languages menu sprocket symbol).

Capitalization

Remember to capitalize verbs and adjectives when translating titles. In German they aren't capitalized except for the first word of the title.
Change capitalization in text to follow English rules. German nouns are always capitalized, as are some pronouns, whereas English uses capitalization to distinguish proper nouns and it is poor style in English to capitalize, for example, subjects of study.

Punctuation

German requires that subordinate clauses be separated from the main clause with commas; English either does not require the commas or uses them to distinguish a non-restrictive clause from a restrictive clause.

Wikitables or infoboxes

Some tables copied from German Wikipedia may not look the same due to differences in margin alignment or width.
CSS classes: German WP may use different class names in its CSS styles.
Row format: A row "|-style=" tag might need plain bar "|" text, not auto-bold "!" so boldface by triple-tic text ('''x''') rather than column "!" to allow style="background:#ccFFcc" for green column headers on a whole row.

Translation issues

Auto-translation help

Machine translation should only be used as a guide; all automatically translated text must be checked and corrected before publishing in mainspace.

Word order: Google Translate and Bing Translator can cross-reword paragraphs into another language, but "proper word order often it doesn't". All automatically translated text must be checked before use, as comparing phrases to the original language.
Verbs/phrases omitted: Google Translate sometimes drops verbs, or whole phrases (even in 2016) in long sentences, or where a verb could have multiple meanings. So a verb gets dropped, rather than risk showing a wrong equivalent verb.
Names and publication titles: Machine translation software may erroneously translate placenames, titles of films, songs, etc., titles in references, and even people's names.
Wikitext form: Google Translate may garble wiki-text markup coding, for example by introducing a space after the slash in closing wp:reftags ("</ ref>").
Short sentences: Computer-translation programs may split long German sentences into shorter parts, which may be clearer, but check that the connection between ideas is still there.

Style

Use English Wikipedia style for birth and death dates (no asterisks and crosses/daggers) and article sections ("Further reading" or "Sources", not "Literature"), and when not using citation templates, be sure to use English order for publication place and publisher name and to translate abbreviations in references and Further reading.
German uses more compound words than English, the famous example being the company name Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft, which would be "Danube Steam Shipping ltd" if it were a UK company. For ready comprehension, break up the compounds using adjectives, phrases, or even explanatory sentences.
Click through to the wiki-linked articles on the German article and look at the interwiki link to English Wikipedia to find the appropriate article to link to in the translation. If there is none, consider using Template:Interlanguage link rather than a bare red link. This assists future translators as well as readers who may be able to make use of the German article. Simply linking to the German article using the [[:de:]] prefix creates a frustrating Easter egg for readers who cannot read German.
Internationalize. Add wiki-links and/or explanatory background for things that would be familiar to most German speakers but may not be familiar to English speakers. It is also good practice to add English-language references when possible, even when they are less good than the German-language references; they enable readers who cannot read German to verify the point and to read more.

Dictionaries

dict.cc is a very handy online English-German/German-English dictionary.
dict.leo.org by LEO
de.wiktionary.org
linguee.de a searchable bilingual document collection, showing how words or phrases were translated in real-world situations

Common words

German photos use "Datei" for "Image" or "File" (replace "Datei:" with "File:").
German images use "|mini" which must be set "|thumb" (or "|hochkant" set as "|upright=0.9") and change "|links" to "|left". Leaving "|mini" can download a huge megabyte photo onto a page.
German templates are not called "Template:" but "Vorlage:".
In German, the term for "web page" is "Webseite"; English "website" is "Website" in German.
The German word links means "left" (as in left-hand), but Weblinks are hyperlinks.
Examples are noted as Beispiel, also with the abbreviation "Bsp."
References are sometimes called Quellen (sources), mostly Einzelnachweise.
Wikipedia is feminine: die deutschsprachige Wikipedia; die englische Wikipedia.

Headers for Notes/References/etc.

The German Wikipedia uses the following standard headings for the See-also, Notes, References and External links sections:

Siehe auch [Bearbeiten] – "See also"
Literatur [Bearbeiten] – "Bibliography" or "Literature"
Einzelnachweise [Bearbeiten] – "References" or "Notes"
Weblinks [Bearbeiten] – "External links"

Each section can be edited separately by clicking on the link "[Bearbeiten]" in the section header. Also, contrary to the English Wikipedia, the section headers named above may appear in any order, so that Einzelnachweise ("Notes") may be the final section of an article.

Proper names

Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions is a valuable guide to the Wikipedia conventions for translating proper names. In particular, beware of compound nouns, some of which need a partial translation e.g. Maintal = "Main Valley" Rappbodetalsperre = "Rappbode Dam".

Template coding

Several templates are portable to the German Wikipedia, including {{Cite web}} & {{Cite book}} (but NOT {{Citation}} ), and dates should be coded in ISO format as "YYYY-MM-DD", and the extra attribute "language=Englisch" should be added for those sources.

Beware the same-name-but-different templates:

{{dts}} is a date template with the parameters reversed. Hence it is not portable.

Because German Wikipedia (DEWIKI) has its own MOS style guides, which are different from those of ENWIKI, many German users might object to the style and formatting of translated articles. It's a whole separate target group to consider.

Typos

Typos: beware mixing of "and" for "und" (in hundreds of articles).
Typos: beware dashes between German words not typical for English; German: "Lewis-und-Clark-Expedition".
Typos: beware the German preposition "an" appearing to be the English article "an".
Note minor differences, such as "oben" meaning "up" while "ober" means upper, and such.
Remember typical use of idioms, such as "an der Strasse" (for "in the street") or "Eingabe/Ausgabe" (for "input/output"), etc.

Content issues

German Wikipedia stubs

There are very few German stub articles, because, by early 2009, many articles were often contested before allowing short contents. Articles that are nearly perfect, but only 99% correctly translated, might be hatted, because they must pass the verification-step for style & content, which is almost like passing a test as semi-featured articles. There seems to be a compulsion (or obsession) to get German articles verified, as if the non-verified articles would be considered harmful trash. The push or drive to verify articles causes frequent severe mindsets on German Wikipedia. Imagine the horror if a new article were to need 3 volunteer days of source verification: Mein Gott! Whereas a 98%-accurate article might be considered, in the English wiki, as fairly good information (for free), in DEWIKI users would rather it be deleted or hidden.

Unsourced content

Although the German Wikipedia has been heavily patrolled for "recent changes" to enforce grammar (or translations), many articles lack specific sources or footnote citations. Some of the German articles seem to contain insider knowledge or folksy text, which often gets challenged when translated into an English article. In accordance with policy WP:VERIFY, when text cannot be traced to sources, it must be removed from articles, even though found in German Wikipedia (which has been heavily guarded for accuracy). Local people might be writing what "everyone knows in Germanic culture", but perhaps it cannot be used in the English Wikipedia for lack of published sources.

Use of sources

However, most articles in the German Wikipedia do have sources, though sometimes fewer than would be considered ideal in the English Wikipedia. The articles will naturally emphasise German language sources, but articles here are expected to emphasize English language sources. It is very highly advisable to find equivalent English language sources for at least the basic material. For points where only a German source is available, it should be retained, and where the best sources are in German (like town data), they should also be included, especially for topics relating to German history or culture. It is not appropriate to eliminate sources merely because they are in German or some other language without replacing them with English sources. If German books have an English translation available, that translation should be added.

Even for the roughest translation, never eliminate the sources totally. If you cannot find equivalents, or do not have the time to look, leave them as is for someone to improve subsequently.

Other concerns

There are many other common issues to consider.