[andrew_eit]

"You need scalable enterprise cloud solutions for digital business processes while maintaining complete data integrity?"

Nitpicking here, but my god, can German companies/universities/organizations please start paying for native English speakers to do their copy-writing and STOP translating directly from German?

It's "Do you need". Not "You need..."

This is the typical translation of the German marketing "Du brauchst <blah>?" or "Du bist ein <blah>? Dann...". I see pattern this all the time, such as "You are a student who wants to work on innovating projects? Then apply...".

This may sound like a rant, but I genuinely think these little details would go a long way to actually showing that the German economy does have some sort of international mindset. This persistence in sticking to these wrong ways just makes me think that 'OK this is another conservative old-school minded German company trying to play unicorn'. If there's no attention to detail or care for the little things on your front-page marketing website - your first contact with your customer - it just leaves me with a bad feeling about the parts I don't see.

I don't know why it frustrates me enough to write a comment in the middle of the day, I guess I really can't understand how global German corporations still, as a rule all make this same error, which I suspect is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger symptom of not wanting to think outside/beyond the DACH bubble. And I feel a sense of sadness that such a country with great prospects just drags its feet lazily into the the future.

Edit: I also see this all the time in Email correspondence, you can immediately tell if a person is a native German speaker because they don't capitalize the first letter in an English email after "Dear X, we are writing <blah>" (which would be 100% correct in German, but somehow no one teaches this in English classes in Germany that in English it is capitalized). For a country that loves rules, this drives me mad.

Edit2: This is definitely a rant and it triggered me emotionally for some odd reason. I concede that my interpretation is quite exaggerated, so please do excuse me! I'll leave the comment however because I'm curious to know whether any others feel the same way.

Edit3: I will also say that translating between German and English is hard as there are some fundamental differences in their structure. There are very colloquial ways to say or not say certain things. That is why native speakers are essential for such things.

Edit4: Please take this comment with a pinch of salt. This is the rant of an fatigued expat who decided to blow some off steam about the oddities of their host country that drive them bananas. For posterity, I will say there at least 10 amazing wonderful things about German culture that I love, for each odd cultural thing. But you know, at some point when you see something for the umpteenth time, something snaps inside of you and it all comes out, especially on a mid-week day like a Wednesday.

[GuB-42]

You are probably right, but on the other hand, correct English or not, anyone who cares will read "blah, blah, blah, skip, skip, skip, where are the actual specs?".

[OskarS]

Yeah, that was my issue as well. Grammar aside, that sentence is so full of corporate-speak as to be virtually meaningless. It might as well just be in German.

[ho_schi]

Yes! The usual corporate websites are worthless and don't present information. Every non-profit, club, or community provides a humble but clear website with the required information and menu! Look at that bloated visual rich websites:

    www.ibm.com
    www.siemens.de
    www.salesforce.com

What is wrong? The "About" must be at the top, the things you provide must be linked with some words at the top or left. They put their images, much Java-Script, and useless stuff across the homepage.

The English wording? A minor problem. I'm thankful that Andrew explains what is wrong and how to fix it! As a German, I'm annoyed by Germans who use every chance to tell other people that their English is much better (than mine).

[alisonatwork]

This goes beyond a nitpick into reactionaryism, in my opinion.

I am a native English speaker who has lived and worked in many countries around the world. In some of those countries English was the primary language, in others it was formalized in the workplace as the business language, in others it was just a lingua franca used by immigrants and expats of many different backgrounds to communicate with one another. One of the best things about English is that it easily adapts to all these roles. It's a flexible language, and there are many different ways to express the same thing. I believe that's one of the reasons why it is so popular as a second language.

English as it is spoken in the professional sphere in Germany is different to the English as it is spoken in the professional sphere in the US or Canada or England or Australia, and that's fine. Ditto India, Singapore, Philippines, South Africa... Unlike Spanish, French, Chinese etc there is no central regulator that defines how the English language is supposed to be used. Grammar can change depending on where you are. English speakers all over the world essentially understand one another, despite using different structures and idioms.

While it is true that completely bastardized grammar can become more difficult to understand, and may result in the language being spoken getting classified more as a pidgin or creole, I don't think it's especially helpful to "nitpick" over this particular issue - a sentence structure that is easily understandable by anyone in the world who can speak English. If "do" gets dropped by English language speakers in the context of questions, what's the big deal? Especially in written language where we use a question mark anyway. Who cares?

[unfocussed_mike]

Right.

I really recommend "Oxford English: a guide to the language" by Ian Dear. It is/was published by Oxford University Press but if you look around on eBay, Abebooks, amazon secondhand etc., you can often find a very cheap "IBM Edition" -- they co-published it along with a dictionary of quotations (presumably they helped compile the latter).

It's a really fantastic volume that goes into such detail about Indian Standard English, for example, that it will make you love English even more.

[Hermel]

> international mindset

The international mindset is to be tolerant with non-native speakers. I find it perfectly ok when a German company uses expressions that hint at their origin. Similarly, I'm not bothered when a British company uses British words or a Texas company uses expressions that are typical for their region.

What triggers me, however, is when people misspell expressions in ways that reveal that they have no clue about where the expression comes from. For example, if someone tries to sound smart by using the latin expression "per se" but actually spells it "per say", that reveals to me that they are probably not as educated as they want to appear.

[zozbot234]

> if someone tries to sound smart by using the latin expression "per se" but actually spells it "per say", that reveals to me that they are probably not as educated as they want to appear.

That's a nice eggcorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

[doppioandante]

As a student of both German and English, this mistake looks weird to me, as you are supposed to start the question with the verb in German (Brauchst du ...?), and this acts as a pretty good reminder to translate the question with the do in English.

[dmurray]

Agreed, as a poor student of German, I'd say "Brauchst du...?" is correct and your German 101 teacher will mark you down for anything else. "Du brauchst...?" is informal, and OK in advertising copy, but "You need...?" in English is an even lower, more informal register than that.

[tpush]

Putting the verb second is pretty common in German advertisement, not really unusual.

[FabHK]

Agreed, it strikes me not as particularly German bad English, but generic bad English. One sees that particular bad construction all the time.

[trh0awayman]

I understand where you're coming from - that companies of this size should be able to afford native English translators, especially if they're internationally facing.

But I think that most people (in the international business community) don't notice the details your talking about, so in the end, it really doesn't make sense to pay for a translator. I live in Germany, and even my most brilliant German friends (with basically native English skills) cannot grasp the subtle differences of when to use "this", "that", or "it" (as in, "this one time at band camp" vs "that one time at band camp", "it's awesome" vs "that's awesome" vs "this is awesome"). It's a dead give away, but almost nobody would ever know except native speakers.

[gruez]

> Edit: I also see this all the time in Email correspondence, you can immediately tell if a person is a native German speaker because they don't capitalize the first letter in an English email after "Dear X, we are writing <blah>"

I don’t get it, which part is supposed to be capitalized, “dear” or “we”? As a native English speaker the sentence looks correct as it’s written. Or maybe I have bad attention to detail.

[cestith]

Both. The greeting is a separate entity and despite ending in a comma or semicolon is not part of the first sentence of the body of the email. This is inherited from English standards for writing letters on actual paper. Unless it's being graded for a class in school, is part of some official communication, or is going to a copy editor, though, it probably doesn't actually bother anyone if this convention is flouted.

[andrew_eit]

"Dear Ms. Smith,

We would like to inform you..."

vs

" Dear Ms. Smith,

we would like to inform you..."

[biztos]

But if you write it on one line, the capitalization of We is definitely wrong.

However you can always tell your correspondent is German by their capitalization of second-person pronouns! Also the awkward use of "kind regards" because they can sense that "with friendly greetings" doesn't sound right.

"Dear Ms. Smith, we would like to inform You that Your cloud subscription will soon be expiring. Please send Your payment by registered letter to..... Kind Regards, Dieter" ;-)

[gruez]

Thanks. I haven't been taught this rule but my brain seems to associate the capitalization requirement with the newline rather than the salutation itself.

[FabHK]

Mail in iOS capitalises it automatically, which drives me nuts when writing in German. (Look, it's not a new sentence, why should I capitalise it?)

[gruez]

My logic/rationalization is that even though there's no period after the "Dear,\n", the newline makes it a separate paragraph and therefore a separate sentence.

[wdroz]

> I also see this all the time in Email correspondence, you can immediately tell if a person is a native German speaker because they don't capitalize the first letter in an English email after "Dear X, we are writing <blah>" (which would be 100% correct in German, but somehow no one teaches this in English classes in Germany that in English it is capitalized).

TIL thanks.

Sadly once you are in the professional world, nobody correct you anymore, so you can't improve/fix your English easily.

[EE84M3i]

Normally I wouldn't, but seeing as your post is about being corrected in English, I'll correct you.

>nobody correct you anymore

Should be "nobody corrects you anymore"

[andrew_eit]

What you say is write and I am guilty of that too. I would feel very rude or out of place telling a colleague of mine to capitalize the first letter after Dear X. Even if I wanted to. So I just write my reply correctly and hope they notice :)

[wdroz]

You are right, I do that too :) It's a bit passive aggressive but more acceptable in professional settings.

[tokai]

You are talking up an 'international mindset', but what you are writing here goes against that. They are not writing native english. They are writing ESL. A true international mindset is accepting that the english the people of the world write to each other is not the same english as british people speak.

Would you also have corrected it if had been text written by Nigerians or others that use a creole or dialect of english?

[DonHopkins]

Customers have hunger for German copy-writing!

[FabHK]

Ze money goes into ze technologie, nicht into ze marketing, jawohl!

[croes]

>you can immediately tell if a person is a native German speaker because they don't capitalize the first letter in an English email

Pretty bold claim. I bet there are many other languages where the first letter after the salutation isn't capitalized.

I also bet that some native english speakers make the same error.

[throwaway4good]

The copy is fine; English does not need to written by native speakers - that is a completely distorted definition of “international mindset”.

[signal11]

There's also the cookie prompt (yes, headline in capitals)

> BEFORE GOING ANY FURTHER: BRIEFLY ABOUT THE PROCESSING OF YOUR DATA

But... that said, as someone who's only done a bit of German on Duolingo, I don't mind, especially for early-stage services. It says to me more work needs to be done around l10n and copywriting, but as long as they keep improving the core product, it's okay.

In fact what annoys me more than awkward English are teams that download and use generic English-language website templates, resulting in super-generic product pages.

[twoneurons]

Being international minded and being an anglosphere slave are completely orthogonal vectors

[specialist]

> STOP translating directly from German

Is this an option in German business culture? Are Germans open to conveying the (mere) gist of a sentence?

Ages ago, we translated our manufacturing software to German. Our German team were an absolute joy to work with. They were so thorough, they'd correct our English, and then translate to German. In other words, our German translators caught mistakes missed by our own technical writers. So awesome.

I'm not sure the reverse is even possible, culturally. Can a German marketing and PR firm accept a localized version of their message? Off the top of my head, I can't think of a German lifestyle product or consumer brand. And the German brands I do know -- BMW, Mercedes, Kraftwerk -- don't much use words for marketing. They don't need to.

[yobbo]

> I can't think of a German lifestyle product or consumer brand

NIVEA, Braun, Miele, Bosch, Birkenstock, various chocolates ... and so on. Lots of marketing in awkward English.

[specialist]

Heh. True.

Let me try again...

Bullshit is hard to translate. Culturally, German branding may have comparatively less bullshit. And therefore less compulsion to translate nuance. Just describe what the product does.

Amazon recruiting will say stuff like "code ninjas needed to invent future!" Versus "get beaten like a rented mule for two years, to make Bezos even more rich, then fall over dead". (How would one translate either version?)

This LIDL/Schwartz pitch, perfectly normal for America, comes off kinda weird, like maybe satire, from a German company.

[jdrc]

You have probably not experienced i18n of american websites

[m2fkxy]

> (...) these little details would go a long way to actually showing that the German economy does have some sort of international mindset (...)

Well, I think that Germany's commercial balance shows this much better than non-native-sounding-yet-fully-correct grammar.

[makerdiety]

No, you did the right thing by ranting. You both shared some knowledge about contemporary German commerce with us and gave the company some constructive feedback for its marketing website. You're on to something here.

[hermannj314]

What if customers that are extremely sensitive to grammar rules end up being very expensive customers to keep happy? Filtering them out on the front end might be a great business move.

I imagine something like "Our customer support is being overworked by completely banal minutiae, what can we do?" We compare different intake funnels, and customers that were presented with a badly translated homepage never reach to support with such issues. Let's make sure to always run that page from now on, those customers aren't worth the hassle. Make sure they stick with AWS and bleed them dry.

[trentnix]

Nothing odd about it. You pointed out a lack of attention to detail. I’m guessing one will find other areas of their product that show a similar lack of detail and attention.

[themdonuts]

I absolutely loved this comment. I feel total empathy not specifically with the topic, but for how you feel. I moved back to my home country (not DE) after 10years abroad and oh man, those thoughts are constantly with me. I'm doing an effort to readapt and hope it works well.

[andrew_eit]

This is the comment I was waiting for :) It's strange isn't it, to suddenly be negatively receptive to something that you never noticed bothered you in the past.

[2143]

I totally empathize.

When American websites are translated to other languages, sometimes some things end up weird.

By the way, I feel Indians speak that way in casual conversations; "you want coffee?", "you want biscuit?" etc.

[andrew_eit]

This doesn't bother me at all, especially at an individual level.

I want to make clear - it's not the language issue per se. I think native English speakers are incredibly privileged to have their language as one of if not the international language, so I could never fault a person for not speaking a foreign language well (I'm sure I butcher the German language in ways that would make Goethe himself cry out in anguish).

It's the fact that this is an international company launching a product in a professional setting. Again, I don't quite know why this bothers me so much, but I feel its within the context of other cultural things I experience.

[webjunkie]

I feel like the other way around it's also pretty bad, if not worse. Technical things written in, or translated to, German sound so boring and stiff that you want to immediately run away.

[ant6n]

> This may sound like a rant, but I genuinely think these little details would go a long way to actually showing that the German economy does have some sort of international mindset.

Except it doesn’t.

[RicoElectrico]

I think you're onto something. So often, Germans think they know English and don't bother to have a native speaker proof-read their copy.

[madoublet]

Do they intend to attract US interest? When I see a country specific TLD, I automatically assume that the company is focused on a specific region.

[bilekas]

I'll nitpick further and say that the grammar is actually perfectly valid.. You don't believe me ?

[gmac]

Even if it's technically grammatical, I don't think it's something a native speaker would generally write or say.

"You need X?" works in a casual setting. But IMHO it looks pretty out of place in a more formal sentence like this with so many fancy nouns.

[bilekas]

It could definitely be reworded to be at least easier to follow. I guess this is where Spanish is useful with the inverted question mark. ¿

[mabbo]

There are the valid grammar rules and there is the way people of the language actually speak. The unspoken rules.

If I can read the text and guess what language the original text was in, I would argue that it's not a very good translation.

[moffkalast]

If there are unspoken rules that can't be defined then they're not rules, they're made up bullshit.

[mabbo]

They can be defined, but nobody does so explicitly. Consider the classic example of the order of adjectives.

You can have a big brown bag, but if you have a brown big bag, something sounds wrong. You can have an excellent blueberry muffin, but not a blueberry excellent muffin. You can meet your 27-year-old Ukrainian friend, but not your Ukrainian 27-year-old friend.

Unless you majored in linguistics or learned English as a second language, you probably never once even thought about the rules of adjective order in English (and in other languages the rules are often different!). But you know them, follow them, and people who don't follow them don't sound right to native English speakers.

And there are so many weird rules like this.

[moffkalast]

I knew you were gonna mention this one and I don't think it really qualifies as it's not really an unspoken rule, it's the pretty well known and strictly defined adjective ranking order.

[ShroudedNight]

English: Shibboleths _all_ the way down.

[cormacrelf]

It is perfectly valid indeed. This person's main complaint is that Germans, who have enough English in their society that that one might even expect dialects to form, are not putting enough effort into disguising themselves as native English speakers. I'd call it 50/50 that the people who built this product speak English at work.

This is like ranting about Microsoft's website using American spelling when clearly they're selling to British people as well, only worse. This is pretty short-sighted. To OC, please keep thoughts like this to yourself. I hope you're not doing this for all the different stylistic usages of English out there, otherwise things are not looking good for literally any Australian business.

[jsty]

This sort of "feels wrong" non-native yet grammatically correct use of language is precisely the kind of thing that would be fine on an internal doc where comprehension is the name of the game, but falls flat on its face on external communications where a more fuzzy "trust" is trying to be engendered.

Or to put it more abruptly - if the release marketing is so low effort they haven't even bothered to get a professional translation, it suggests the same care and attention may have been lavished on the product.