I understand only train station

Having lived here now for some years, I often come across signs, advertisements, information and other texts that have been translated in English from their original language meaning, whether that is Italian or German.  Take the two pictures of cards that are English phrases translated from German sayings.  Although done intentionally, it is interesting how languages are used.  Take the phrase, “ich glaube ich Spinne”, a perfectly meaningful phrase in German that means, “I cannot believe it”.  Now, translate it literally into English and you get “I think I spider”, die Spinne being the German word for a spider.  Once you know the German phrase it is hilarious when you read it in English.  Or take another phrase, “Ich versteh nur Bahnhof” – “I understand only train station”.  The meaning here is that one simply does not understand what the other is saying.

50 shadows or 50 shades?

One thing I have noticed during the process of learning to speak another language, is how many English words have been adopted or borrowed to become new words in that language.  The same can be said for English, the ultimate mixture of Latin, French and Germanic languages.  Is it though, not the purpose of a language to breathe and grow, to change and evolve? 

I am always surprised when I see signs written in English that have the unenviable task of conveying a meaning to explain or direct the point of the phrase that has been translated from the original language.  For example, I recently saw a local website that had the tag line for one of their products, Neuer Imagespot: Cool shadows.  What caught my eye was that the German word for shadow is der Schatten or die Schatten for the plural.  The same word can also be used for the English word, shade or shades. So, German has one word that has two potential meanings in English, depending on what you are trying to convey.  Many languages have this double meaning; German for example has the word das Schloss.  Das Schloss can be either a castle or a lock, depending on what you are trying to convey.

Now, I would presume that this tag line was not meant to portray the image of shadows in the readers mind; perhaps shades would be the more appropriate word to use. The English word shade has a different meaning to shadow.  Did they mean shadow?  I do not know, but I would hazard a guess that the implication was to mean shade.  The person who wrote the translated sentence might not have been aware of the word shade or that in English, cools shadows is simply meaningless unless you are specifically referring to a series of shadows on the ground. In this case, the image accompanying the tag line was of a woman in a black and white photograph, which makes me assume the correct word to use would be shades. 

I must also remember that perhaps the intended audience is not bothered about the use of a particular English word within a mainly German or Italian piece of text.  Is the aim to use an English word to convey meaning or is it to create a new meaning?  Take the German word for a mobile phone, das Handy.  In English, handy, again, has a different meaning but I can understand why word handy would be used by the German language.   After all, German has the same word as English for hand; therefore a mobile phone is a handy tool.

The Anglo South Tyrolean

What a beauty!

I have seen several signs that have used English words or phrases to convey a meaning.  For example we have signs informing motorbike riders who ride to fast or drink drivers that there is “no credit” after a crash or in an afterlife.  Take the, “you are beautyful” sign in the images, a case of clever marketing and individualism or just a lazy spelling mistake?  The best one that I have seen though, is the sign to inform about the potential of sudden water surges in rivers due to the release of water from hydroelectric plants.  I will let you read the sign and take away the meaning.