German localization: language challenges and tricks

German is a West Germanic language official in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. It is the 12th most spoken language in the world, with around 130 million speakers.

The German language has two varieties: Hochdeutsch (High German) and Plattdeutsch (Low German), with a dozen dialects included. Hochdeutsch is the basis of standard German, which is learned in universities and used in mass media, government, etc. At the same time, each land in Germany has its peculiarities and varieties of vocabulary and pronunciation.

To show the difference, take a look at the "I have a present for you" phrase translation:

• Ich habe ein Geschenk für dich. (Standard German)
• I hob a G'schenk fia di. (Bavarian German)

If you want to learn more about the differences between German in regions, we recommend reading our article about Austrian and standard German.

When it comes to localization, German is a high-priority language for those wishing to enter the European market. The reasons are that Germany itself is the top economic power in this region, and German-speaking countries make up a big part of the central European area.

To simplify the German localization tasks for all comers, we described the main peculiarities of the language and ways to handle them in this article. Scroll down, deep dive, and get the best practices for your projects.

Peculiarities of the German language

1. Complex sentence structure and word order.

The German language has unusual word order and sentence structure for English-speaking audiences. One of the most notable differences is verbs with separable prefixes (ab-, an-, auf-, ein-, fest-, her-, hin-, etc.).

• I get up in the morning. ---> Ich stehe am Morgen auf.

In this case, the verb aufstehen (to stand up/to get up) splits into two parts (auf + stehen), and the prefix goes to the end of a grammatical basis.

Challenges . The example above doesn't look challenging, but the situation changes entirely when the translator sees the long sentence split on a few strings.

Example: "To ensure that the translated software functions correctly in all regions, we get up early in the morning to test the application thoroughly."

Translation: "Um sicherzustellen, dass die übersetzte Software in allen Regionen korrekt funktioniert, stehen wir früh am Morgen auf und testen die Anwendung gründlich."

The thing is that, that "stehen wir früh am Morgen auf" phrase can be ruined if the translator separately works on a string "in all regions, we get up early" = "in allen Regionen stehen wir früh auf" so the "am Morgen auf" part can be lost.

Solution

Working with Lingohub, translators can see the segment's keys and filter the data based on their coincidence for a better context. For example, it is possible to filter segments like below as all of them have the same "navigation" part:

• navigation.button
• navigation.resource
• navigation.projects

Additionally, if there are any questions about the context, the discussion tool helps to solve them. First, the context panel allows the discussion to open right during translation; second, mentioning segments and projects simplifies the task, as all participants clearly understand what they are discussing.

2. Formal vs informal

Understanding the correct tone of voice during localization to German is crucial. Unlike English, with a single form "you," that can be used in any situation, German has four different pronouns: du (singular informal), sie (singular formal), ihr (plural informal), and Sie (plural formal).

Additionally, the pronouns the translators use also impact the verbs, so a mistake in the tone of voice will cost additional time and money to fix. For example, if you want to ask, "Have you read the book?" there will be two different sentences:

• Formal - "Haben Sie das Buch gelesen?"
• Informal - "Hast du das Buch gelesen?"

Challenges

No matter how many translators work on localization, the business's voice should be consistent and uniform when communicating with users. Social media, landing pages, and marketing emails must follow the same rules/ language forms, and a style guide is required to reach this task.

Solution

Instead of long documentation, which makes it hard to find a reply to the question, Lingohub designed a style guide tool that provides the primary information and also affects machine translation suggestions, thus cutting off the time required for quality translation. With the Lingohub style guide, translators get all the needed information during the localization process.

3. Cases and genders

Each noun in the German language has an article that describes its gender. These articles can be definite (der (masculine), die(feminine), das(neuter), and indefinite (ein, eine, ein) accordingly. Additionally, these articles are impacted by the cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive.)

For example, the masculine noun "der Tisch" (table, nominative case) becomes "den Tisch" (accusative case) and "dem Tisch" (dative case).

Challenge

This peculiarity requires a precise context, especially when talking about some names for fictional things (which is a typical case in the game development industry.)

Solution

To avoid problems with article use, it is best to create a glossary that lists all the terms along with their corresponding meanings and descriptions. In the image below, you can see how Lingohub highlights all the terms and provides detailed data inside the edit

Other peculiarities of German localization that are important to notice

• German is a language of compound words, so the number of words in the text can be less compared with the original, but the number of characters is higher. The "washing machine"="Waschmaschine," "grocery store"= "Lebensmittelgeschäft."
• In German, all nouns are capitalized.
• The German language has a unique letter, eszett/scharfes S (ß), which denotes a special sound pronounced as a long "s." For example, "die Straße" (the street) or das Floß (the raft.) Umlauts (ä, ö, ü) are special German vowels with two dots on top: ä, ö and ü. They modify the pronunciation of the base vowels a, o, and u.

Conclusion

German software localization requires a deep knowledge of the language peculiarities from the start to prepare comprehensive documentation and find the best translation team.

From the heart of the Austrian mountains in Linz, our team comprehends all the potential challenges that businesses may encounter. That's why we designed an all-in-one solution for content localization and additionally provide top-notch translation services. Book a demo call with our team to get additional information and let's grow together