World 0.1 – Regional Differences In Written German

My personal background

As to my personal skills, I do offer translation and copy-writing in standard German, Austrian German and Swiss German. This may sound odd, therefore, here are some explanations.

I was born into a Swiss family, so my first native language, so to speak, was a Swiss dialect. I also read a lot of Swiss newspapers and magazines, participate in Swiss politics and I am therefore familiar with standard German as written in Switzerland. As to Austria, it's the country where I grew up, went to school and spent most of my university studies. It's also where I currently live. Needless to say, I am immersed in Austrian German every day.

“German German” is a different story. I thought I was able to write in totally correct standard German after university – but it was only after having worked at SDL and having got a lot of useful feedback from my friendly supervisors and colleagues that I managed to entirely eliminate helvetisms and austriacisms from my writing. At SDL, I also contributed a style guide for Austrian and Swiss German – an interesting endeavour that helped me rationalize the actual differences in comparison to standard German.

I think my main advantage is that I am highly conscious of the slight differences between these three variants of standard German rather than just having a “gut feeling” for what's right.

Is there something like “Austrian standard German” or “Swiss standard German” anyway?

Yes, there is.

A lot of people, even in Austria or Switzerland, believe that there's dialect and there's standard German. But the truth is that written standard German is slightly different in each country. It's equally important to note that these variants of German are not just non-standard deviations from German as it is written in Germany, but they are standards in their own right. Quality newspapers such as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung or Die Presse are good examples for correct standard German in its Swiss or respectively Austrian variants.

Regional does not equal colloquial

Also, it's important to point out the differences between colloquial regionalisms – which should be avoided in any case – and regional standards. The same goes for English, by the way, where there's a difference between specifically, say, American terms on one hand and slang on the other hand.

Do Swiss or Austrians make worse German translators?

On a side note, I have noticed that a few people have a flawed perception of non-German translators' ability to produce standard German output. They think that by employing a translator from Germany they are on the safe side with regards to inelegant regionalisms because they get it right instinctively. I cannot emphasize enough how wrong – and dangerous – this line of thought seems to me.

It's a dangerous view because it would imply that a speaker of standard German does not have to rationalize his or her output and consciously check it for non-standard expressions. However, as in any language, writing in clean and impeccable style requires knowledge and skill. German regions have their own regional and colloquial expressions, and I have seen non-standard expressions in translations produced by Germans as well. The most dangerous attitude for a copy writer or translator to have is to lull oneself into believing that one gets it right instinctively.

What does it take to adapt copy specifically for Austria or Switzerland

The preliminary question to ask is, of course, whether you want to adapt your copy to each German-speaking country anyway. In most cases, it does not make sense, but in some fields – marketing, legal texts to cite but two – it is crucial. I shall write about this issue in further detail in a future post.

However, once you have decided to go for it, it is usually a bad idea just to tell your German translators to produce local versions. This happens sometimes, but it's a waste of money – they would simply change the spelling for Switzerland replacing ß with ss and probably change a few terms (e.g. die E-Mail >> das E-Mail). However, an Austrian or Swiss copy writer would also spot possibilities for stylistic changes and, most importantly, since this is one of the primary benefits of having country-specific versions, cultural references that have to be adapted. If you believe that this isn't necessary, why produce country-specific versions at all?

This yields the question what to take into account when deciding whether it would make sense to have country-specific versions of a given text and when it wouldn't . More on this in one of my next posts.

Back to the top of this page

Categories: Language and Translation Localization and Internationalization

Keywords/tags: German Austrian German Swiss German regional austriacisms helvetisms translation translator writing