Like-Blog
Presenting you the most interesting translation solutions
Why Like-Blog? Now, first of all, this blog is a blog that you should like (and read regularly) – at least, if you are interested in translation. Then, the topic discussed here is one in which the meaningful likeness between a text and its translation in the language pair English-German plays a key role. On this page, I will take a close look at some interesting translation solutions that I have come across in the course of my work as a translator and translation scholar.
A translation solution is only as good as the arguments that support it. This means that any translation criticism, whether positive or negative, needs to be justified. The quality of a translation solution shows only when we compare it to other possible translation solutions in a given translation situation. Therefore, a translation critic should not only say why a translation solution is bad, but also demonstrate what a better solution might look like. I will try to stick to these principles of translation criticism. So if you have any questions regarding my line of argument or if you disagree, please, let me know your opinion by phone at +49 4171 6086525 or by e-mail to bittner@businessenglish-hamburg.de. So much for the introduction. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this blog!
Unsustainable (August 2025)
In “Sold Down the River” by Eleanor J. Sterling and Merry D. Camhi, published online in Natural History Magazine (www.naturalhistorymag.com), we find the following sentence:
“To grow food for expanding human populations, people divert rivers, drain inland seas, and extract fossil groundwater collected over thousands of years, often at unsustainable rates.”
The German translation ran: “Um für eine stetig wachsende Bevölkerung Nahrung anzubauen, werden Flüsse umgeleitet, Binnenmeere entwässert und jahrtausendealtes fossiles Grundwasser abgezogen – und all das in einem unverantwortlichen Umfang.”
The present blog entry is not about finding the translation error but about recognising how the source and target texts differ and how that difference should be evaluated. Whether a difference in the target text is justified and – if so – to what extent, depends on the translation strategy. The translation strategy should be established on the basis of an analysis of the translation situation: What are the readers’ expectations? Are they aware that they read a translation? Do they read the translation because they do not understand the language of the source text? In other words: do they rely on the translation because they need to comprehend the original?
In the given context, a journalistic text is to be translated and the translation published in a comparable journalistic medium. Thus, the readers are probably not aware that they are reading a translation – unless they notice a corresponding note in the target text. What they are interested in is just the presentation of the content, which has to be inherently consistent. In the case of a less-than-perfect original, this would imply that the target text needs to be better than the source text.
How should the above translation be evaluated against the background of these considerations? The focus, here, is on the expression “often at unsustainable rates”. At a first glance, a reader might object that “unsustainable” is much more specific in meaning than its German rendering, “unverantwortlich”, and that, therefore, the translation should be improved in this respect. A closer inspection also shows that “und all das in einem unverantwortlichen Umfang” relates to all points mentioned at the beginning of the main clause, whereas “often at unsustainable rates” only refers to the extraction of fossil groundwater collected over thousands of years. The question whether this is another mistake that needs to be corrected should be answered in the negative, though. On the contrary: we would argue that the translation, as it stands, is better than the original: for if “often at unsustainable rates” refers only to “extract fossil groundwater collected over thousands of years”, it is redundant because the extraction of fossil groundwater can never be sustainable. Here, the use of a less specific adjective in combination with an adverbial (“in einem unverantwortlichen Umfang”) that relates to all three aspects – diverting rivers, draining inland seas, and extracting fossil groundwater – slightly modifies and improves the meaning of the original.