TRANSLATING Dutch - how to start even if you don't know one word!

Problem
A Dutch sentence is on the screen in front of me. I do not know Dutch but I know about 100-200 common words of German. What does the sentence mean in English? Let's have a go, a try.

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven,en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

At first glance it means nothing. Then I took it word by word looking for one word to see if I could identify the subject.

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven,en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

The first two words are 'Een kind' . Ah! Kindergarten. Kind is German for child. German and Dutch are very similar. What is een? Either one child or a child. Now I know the general subject matter. It's about a child or children, or mankind.

As I read on the next word which makes any sense is kinderen. 

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven,en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

That must be plural for kind, children. Twee kinderen. Twee sounds like twins and three. Either two children or three children. If the sense had been one, two, three, that would have been logical. My guess is that the logical jump is from one child to two children.

At this point, even that doesn't matter. I am gaining confidence. I have the subject of the first sentence and the subject of the second sentence.

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven,en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

What is niet? It appears twice!

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven,en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

Niet is Russian for no. Long ago I saw a film featuring Goldie Hawn with the song containing the phrase: "NIET. NIET. NIET - not any more!" Niet means no. "No, no, no - not any more." The German is nicht. The common element is the letter N starting: Negative, Null, Never, No, Niet, Nicht, Neither, Nor, Nil, None, Naught.

So sentence one is a child ... not

Sentence two is about two children ... not

Look again. The word kinderen is repeated at the end!

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven, en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

A child is also repeated.

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven, en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

I can't work out the start, a child vraagt, but een kind kan - sounds like a child can!

That's very common in many laguages from Europe, K for c. C is S.

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven, en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

After the first comma, I see 'en'.  And or but? My guess is and.

We still don't have any idea what it's all about, but we are building up the sentence word by word, learning Dutch, growing in confidence.

If kan is can, and en is and, I guess that dat, which appears twice means that.

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven, en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

What else sound familiar, related to family life and the world of a child and its father and mother?

vader of moeder ? Either murder or mother? My guess is mother.

Vader of moeder? Further of murder or father of/off/or mother?

Vader of moeder - obviously father or mother!

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven, en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

Still no nearer the sense, but we are gathering a word with every re-reading.

Back to the start:

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven,

A child doesn't eat its leavened bread or a child doesn't live its life?

Leven - a noun, must be life.

Het must be his or its. Het leven, his life.

Om must be on or of.

two children 'geadopteerd' looks like adopted. 

Ge in German is the prefix, fixed ahead of the word, for the past tense. Ge-adopteerd means adopted.

Een kind vraagt niet om het leven, en een kind kan zijn vader of moeder ook niet uitkiezen.
dat is ook de reden dat ik twee kinderen geadopteerd heb als mijn eigen kinderen.

Mijn eigen kindered - my / mine own children, my / mine eye children?

I don't know eigen but I'm pretty sure mijn is mine.

Now I know that in Dutch ij is simply an i sound, so that confusing j can be ignored. IJ is simply their way of spelling i pronounced eye.

I have had enough. I am now willing to go to Google translate. Next time I see Dutch I will be able to recognize that it is Dutch, and will make an attempt at trying to get the gist of it before translating.

I'm taking a short break. Later I shall add the whole translation.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages.Take a look at my other travel blog:
http://luxurytravelforless.co.uk

Translating a sales email from German and how to teach German with rainbow cake

Problem
I am learning German and can recognise such useful phrases 'as the horse is in the field' or 'the plate is on the table' or 'the boy is eating chicken'. However that doesn't help me when I am emailed a German sales pitch. I was going through my inbox and about to delete it when I thought, let's translate this so that next time it's easy to see what the sender is on about. Here are the results

I tired Google translate, word by word, watching whether I could gain by learning both the words in a phrase and the whole phrase if it made a new concept, just as kinder is child and garten is garden but kindergarten is a pre-school class.

I managed to keep two screens open, one for my blog and the other for the translator, the third for the original German text. Using the F3 key on the top line of my keyboard I could open all these windows, but they only separate on the screen in thumb nail size.

(Aside: The very first computer  had, years ago. allowed a split or slit screen for when you were correcting a text so that you could compare the new and old versions. I am surprised nobody has yet devised an automatic setting to do this for comparing two or four screen.  I shall do an online search and hunt for it.)

b l e i came up as lead but b l e i b came up as follow. The entire phrase was different .

German - English
bleib auf den laufenden - keep up to date
folge uns auf - follow us on
laufenden - current
mitfeiern - celebrate
r e g e n s b o g e n t o r t e - rainbow cake

English - German
arc - bogen
celebrate - mitfeiern
current - laufenden
follow us on - f o l g e  u n s auf
keep up to date - b l e i b auf den laufenden
rain - r e g e n
rainbow - regenbogen

I was thinking about translating from English into German. The John Lewis slogan 'never knowingly undersold' is related to but not identical to other phrases such as: We won't be beaten on price. Bargain. Good value.

Another group of English phrases in sales advertisements and letters is:
Free for every customer.
For the first 100 customers only.
Competition. Free to enter. No purchase necessary.

Translation is very tricky. You have to get it just right. You don't want to mislead customers. You have to consider goodwill, plus legal requirements. One new business offered a free cupcake on a voucher site. A small item. But they were more successful than they dreamed, could not cope with the speed of the demand. They had thousands of requests which they had to honour and went bankrupt. That's why you see wording such as first fifty customers only. They are not trying to cheat you by saying they've sold out. They really do need to be prepared for too much of a good thing - success. So, translating as a ghost writer one has to consider the consequences to the writer or seller and the reader.

I have a friend in Singapore who teaches French and German to a mostly English and Chinese speaking group of students. Other friends of mine teach French in schools such as the International schools. Others teach English as a foreign language to teens and adults.

If I were to teach German to a group of student in a class, I would split them into groups and give each group of two or three or four or five an email or advertisement. I would have translated the text myself in advance. They would have ten to twenty minutes to translated it and instruct their representative on what to read back to report to the whole class. Then we would go round the group. For homework, they would have all four texts and be asked to translate all four and list the words dictionary style, English to German and German to English. if we had time, I would then ask then to make up their own advertisement or sales letter. They might do a short, succinct version of one or more of the letters. Or they could create a new subject, using the same phrases.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. Please share links to posts and have a look at my books.