Harpsburg for DAZ Studio - Nitpicking on details
maikdecker
Posts: 2,750
I hope my school english didn't get me lost on that title - 
- but the first time I saw the screenshots for HowieFarkes' Harpsburg for Daz Studio I felt the urge to make a post about several details which stand out to a german DAZ user
First off, it's an outstanding product, made with a lot of love for details and HowieFarkes managed to capture the look of a small village main street in Frankonia - where I live - nearly perfectly. I still didn't have a real need for the product, but as it got into the D+FAY sale today I had to buy it.
And the first thing I did was start up GIMP to make some slight changes to several textures, because they out as examples of how (mostly) americans fail when trying to use the german language (or what they think of as german language) in their products. In this case it's
- a hotel named "Hotel Adlerjäger". I asked google about it, but in the whole of Germany there seems to be not a single hotel with that name. Which probably has the reason, that in Germany hunting eagles never ever was something seen as positive. The name implies that someone hunts eagles, not that someone is hunting WITH an eagle, which was maybe the goal of this namegiving process.
So a more fitting for that hotel could be like "Hotel zum Adler" (notice the "zum" because it's important... a newer hotel might do without it, but a traditional hotel with have it) or "Hotel Goldener Adler" (which could also go as "Hotel zum Goldenen Adler" or something like that - a souvenir shop named "Geschenkerhaus"... that one is 99.99% okay, except for that geschenke R haus. The word Geschenkehaus is something regional for the south of germany and for towns/villages with lots of tourists visiting them. They sell the stuff that tourists buy to take home and give as presents to relatives and friends to prove that they were in that foreign country. Present/s is Geschenk/e in german, so these tourist traps are often called named "Geschenkehaus". But without the R, which has no place in that name in the german language.
- there's a blackboard on the wall of the bakery, showing what it offers. And the first item on the list shows another misspelling, by telling us that the bakery sells "Pretzel", which is the english word for the german word Bretzel or Brezel or Breze (depending where in Germany one is). A small difference, but one that hurts the eye of a german reader
It could have got even worse when it would have been Pretzels (which, depending on where in the south of germany one is, would be either "Brez'n, Bretzln or Bretzeln..) but as I'm originating from the north of Germany probably even I wouldn't get it 100% right. - The museum would in reality probably called something like "Heimatmuseum (name of the town)" but that isn't really worth nitpicking about.
Please don't see this post as PA bashing, but as an attempt to give advise to PAs who try to work in a setting that needs the use (and knowledge) of the language of a foreign country, in which they might be not as fluent in as they think. Even google often delivers hilariously funny translations, so why not use this forum as a possible help for getting the details right. There's tons of friendly people from all over the world reading (and writing) here, who probably would gladly be of help.
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Comments
Well, I could see the name "Adlerjäger" for a hotel or pub ("Kneipe") happen as a reference to some local joke or comical story. Kinda like it could happen that some pub in Alaska got called "The Goldhunter" because they happen to have an old story about a local idiot digging for gold in the snow.
I always enjoy reading native speaker insights like this.
Why do you have the Chinese character for soup as a tattoo?
Had to mention it... because every time I see a Chinese character in one of the models / skins I buy, I call my wife over and ask her to translate.
Most of the time she stares, tilts her head, then says "It doesn't say anything."
Or, "Well, I guess it could have said ... but it's upside down / out of order / using the wrong character."
It works both ways. I've looked at Chinese websites selling things to domestic customers where clothing is sold with random English words on them, or sometimes just random western letters. Most alarming though were children's t-shirts with perfectly gramatical English phrases that included the f-word. Oops.
Not just chinese... Some people still believe translations by Google are accurate.
At work we were shown a manual that one of our engineers had made about threaded couplings (plumbing/piping) and on the front page he called it a "Muff"... Just because that was the word offered by Google as translation for the commonly used, non-official finnish word. Nobody understood, when I said that manual could not be sent to our clients and distributors...
In the end I had to ask a guy in our UK office, what the word "muff" brought to his mind and show the answer to the engineer before he understood, why it was not a good word to use
There was a while when a number of Shanghai restaurants sold food with 'Wikipedia Sauce'. Not sure if that still happens.
Google also has a utility called Google Lens which attempts to use the Google translate engine on text in a photo. It made a complete disaster of the technical instructions for aligning the shortwave bands on a vintage German radio! Technical documents are notoriously difficult to translate, even for professionals. My sister, who lives in France, is a professional translator. She used to send me stuff to get advice on technical terms.
Fun fact: if you're talking (well, writing...) about a sleeve to couple two tubes, the german word for that is Muffe and it's utterly SFW. A Muff for us germans is also not offensive. And I really start to wonder, what a translation of either into finnish would result in and what that non-official finnish word would get translated into in german
Well, I bought the thingy on the $1.99 sale... tho I dunno if I'll ever use it in the originally-intended context of being on the other side of the Pond from me... (Might use it in a "holodeck simulation" story, or plop it down on another planet and say "Yeah, on planet New Germany they recreated the look of things back where they came from on Old Earth...") ...tho I suppose I might randomly have one or the other of my characters vacation in Germany or something, eventually.
That said, will these replacement images be placed up on ShareCG at some poimt, or something?
I too appreciate the Deutsche to English translation. I'm not sure what HowieFarkes native language is, but there are lots of products that get "Americanated" ; so it's not just him.
For me, it's not that big of a deal. I change what I don't like anyway. ;
Next time I revist it, I try to incorporate your suggestions where I'm able.
As I edited the original textures and not made completely new ones by using any templates - as there seem not to be any - I don't think that I could give those edited ones away due to copyright reasons!?!
Hmmmm.... interesting. I had assumed the signs and stuff were seperate surfaces so one could replace them with their own sign images as needed. I hate it when some object, like a TV set or a hanging sign, the entire object and all the other stuff in the room has ONE single image for the entire object and room, including the stuff you might like to change the appearnces of, such as what's showing on that TV, or what's written on the blackboard. Makes it more inconvenient for me to change that screen content, for instance.
MIGHT be able to change out the sign images using LIE layers, tho, and distribute those.
(edit: Bah, typos!)
was a hand warmer until last century too, like many words it changed, as a kid I had a pink furry muff on a cord
The hand warmer variety in action (Sensibility Expansion 2)
Yeah, the commonly used non-official word for the part in finnish, has been taken from hand-warmer, therefore Google did offer the right word, but for the wrong item. Muff is also used for the part in swedish.
In the 90's, it was my task to create manuals for complete boiler plants, in all the required languages (Russian/German/English/Finnish) and when I was making manuals for our own boilers, I was given a boiler manual from a BIG company we were working with - Look here boy, this is how it's done...
After some five pages, I was sitting next to it, thinking that I had lost my ability to read and understand english... Called one of the owners of the BIG company as I knew him from the construction sites and asked if they had let some native english speaker read it, and explained that I would not call if I was nitpicking...
The next day I received a call that would not have needed a telephone to be heard from 40 miles away "Who do you think you are... The translation was made by university graduate, professional translator...", but that manual was never, ever seen again...
Pink furry muff would look cute
Sorry... I went and read McGyver's post, haven't been able to sleep and have to wake up in 1.5 hours to go to work...
There is an actual restaurant in L.A. called La Poubelle (and I could have sworn I saw the same name on the Simpsons or another animated comedy) and it actually means TRASH CAN in French lol.
I appreciate maikdecker's corrections as well. I have not even looked in that sort of detail yet at the set but assumed that the artist reached out and asked someone beforehand about such language. Frightful to say my German isn't good enough to have caught it without looking it up and that is fraught with old regional dialects can often still be used on business signs, such that I would wind up doing something like using standard high German (after I looked it up) only to find out too late I was wrong to do that was and I needed to use regional dialects of the type maikdecker talked about.
I love reading Chinese written English in product writeups on Amazon as they are so politely written and hopeful, even if not really Queen's English or Standard American dialect.
Harpsburg is clearly inspired by Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and is a must go to for any tourist in Germany.
"Geschenke(R)haus", well nobody would say that anymore. Germans usually don't mind using english terms for presenting themselfes more international.
Since Rothenburg has tourists from all over the world, they'd just call it "Gift-Shop"
I am o.k with "Adlerjäger". At least it is fictional and nobody will sue you.
Fun fact: as a northerner I never ever heard that "Geschenkehaus" before in the 62 years of life, but I did google for it before writing my post and - voila, as the french say - right at Rothenburg ob der Tauber there IS a Gift Shop (aka Tourist Trap) called "Geschenkehaus am Markt" (non-comercial link to the Rothenburg o.d.T. Tourist Office Webpage).
And about that Adlerjäger... Someone hunting eagles in the past couple hundred years was a criminal - a poacher probably - or at least frowned upon, and with the eagle being the heraldic animal for Germany and many places in Germany using "Adlerjäger" as the name for anything would at least raise an eyebrow for most Germans.
Naming conventions for shops, bars etc are a lot more strict hereabouts than in other - especially english speaking - countries, I think. While "The Bishop's Head" is an ordinary name for a british pub, a Germany I don't expect to see a sign in front of a pub to say "Der Kopf des Bischoffs".
I couldn't ask for more
Many years ago, a friend of mine used these when trying to flirt with the girls (even though he knew it was fake-french):
"Ah, ma poubelle, vous et tres apéritif. Voulez vous coucher avec moi chapeau claque ce soir?"
Once in a while one of the girls was impressed by his ability to communicate in a foreign language - and others just had a good laugh
Mylady, please.. there might be children around reading this
I was fortunate to spend a few years of my childhood in northern West Germany (Paderborn & Soltau), and I'm deeply embarrassed to say that I learnt very little German (enough for the shops & little else) mostly because all the German kids I met were much more determined to speak English than I was determined to speak German - I was lazy even then!
A few years ago my family & I went on holiday to Bavaria & Tyrol and I was left stunned. I simply couldn't believe the amount of English in the shops, on packaging and on signs. In the shop windows, they no-longer had 'Geöffnet/Geschlossen', instead had 'Open/Closed', no longer had 'Verkauf' or 'Ausverkauf', instead 'Sale' or 'Closing Down Sale', and 'Push/Pull/Automatic Door' on the doors where once there was 'ziehen(IIRC)/drücken'. In some ways, I was actually saddened by this. Germany seemed to be loosing a little of what made it so unique - admittedly not the core, but around the edges.
Regards,
Richard
Has something changed recently?
Some 15-20 years ago I did one or two trips per year to Germany with a van, collecting Ebay purchases (classic car parts and tools) and then it was just german and maybe one in ten people that I met, was able to communicate with me in english.
Luckily I did/do understand some german and speak enough to get myself understood.
It was 10 years ago. But.. possibly Bavaria & Tyrol are more set up for tourists. Don't know. But the change from the 1970's was astonishing. I did visit in 1990 in my 2CV, and had the joy of finding a car that made it look fast, sleek & modern - the Trabant. Sadly few of those seem to exist anymore, so my 2CV has reverted to its former position of being the slowest and most old fashioned vehicle on the road.
Regards,
Richard
I once came across a hotel in central Manchester called "La Mal Maison". This translates into English as "The Sick House". It would appear that the proprietors of this establishment had a very dodgy grasp of French.
Cheers,
Alex.
I saw only a few Trabants on my trip to the far south-east corner (halfway between Dresden and the Czech border, beautiful region) this spring as well. And at least one of them was converted to electric, which is supposedly a new hype. So they're still there, but yes, they've become pretty rare.
I would say that this anglophile use of english is probably dominant in areas that are visited by many tourists. And yes, even in day-2-day situations - like "sale!!!" and suchlike - english gained a lot of populartity since the '70s, probably enhanced by multinational businesses which love to streamline their advertisements, so they can used in different countries. Stuff comes to mind like the chocolate bar formerly know as "Raider" being now nearly globally being named "Twix" (happened 1991 or so..)
In 2021 there was still 38,173 Trabant in Germany with a license to roam the streets, which makes them more popular than Tesla cars (only 34,000 licensed in 2021), alas, most of the Trabant probably spend their time standing in garages and only get out on the streets when there's a Trabbi Driver Convention somewhere. There's also some 2000 or so Renault R4 around in Germany (which would battle that "slowest and old fashioned" title of your Döschwö (which is how germans call the 2CV (due to the french pronounciation))) and if you belong to the type of people who are fortunate enough to encounter a unicorn regularly, you might even encounter a Goggomobil on german streets once in your lifetime. I was around when many of them still were out there, in the wilds, stopping more modern (and faster..) cars on the Autobahn when they tried to pass a truck...
Considering it was in Britain and the love the British have for the French, I'd say that wasn't a mistake, but was done on purpose.
Well this sentence could work as "drunk French" I suppose
I wouldn't advise calling a French-speaking girl "ma poubelle" if you're trying to flirt with her though...
There are actually quite a few places called "La Malmaison" in France, most notable one is probably the Château de Malmaison
And there even seems to be a whole chain of british hotels called Malmaison although it STILL could be just a joke towards the french