German is the West Germanic language par excellence and shares a family with English, Yiddish, Dutch, Low German, Afrikaans and Frisian. Legal writings in East Central German and the Luther Bible  (1522-34) mark the birth of the modern standard German language. the predominant variety is High German , which has has evolved from several dialects. These include Bavarian, Franconian, Hessian, High Saxon, Thuringian, Silesian and High Prussian.

There are also varieties and dialects that have had their own evolution in other German-speaking parts of the world, such as Switzerland, Pennsylvania, Buenos Aires, etc.

GERMAN SYNTAX: “LEARN IT YOU MUST

As a reference, we can mention the way in which Yoda, the character from the Star Wars saga speaks to give us an idea of the syntactic order in German. Unlike in Romance languages, the direct object comes before the main verb. Think of a sentence like “I am going to explain something important to you” In fact, German speakers themselves joke about this and compare their language to that of the endearing Star Wars character to explain to foreigners how it works.

IMPORTANCE OF GERMAN

German is one of the most sought-after languages in the language services sector This is due to the enormous economic and cultural power of the countries where it is the official or vehicular language It is not for nothing that Germany is one of the world’s leading economies, the economic engine of the European Union. It is therefore in great demand as a first or second foreign language, although its characteristics make it a little more difficult to learn and master than the Romance languages or English. .

Due to the high quality of life in Germany and the shortage of qualified and experienced professionals, the rates for translation and interpreting from or into German are higher than for other common working languages such as Spanish, English, French, Italian, etc. In the specific case of translation from this language into Romance languages such as Spanish, it should be kept in mind that in German it is common to find very long compound words that give rise to three, four, five or more words in the target language. Therefore, the per word rate should be slightly higher to compensate for this unequal numerical correspondence.

STEREOTYPES?

On a personal note, our experience with German translators has been excellent from the very beginning. The same applies to our German-speaking customers. One should always be cautious with preconceived ideas; however, based on our experience, we can say that the positive preconception that German culture implies a high degree of professionalism, seriousness and a taste for a job well done is true. . In multilingual projects, it is often the German translator who becomes more involved and includes comments on possible errors or inconsistencies in the original and other translation problems which, once clarified with the client, also help to improve the translation into the other languages.