German Language Asked on October 25, 2021
About me:
I’m bilingual English/German and currently live in Germany. My spoken and written German is fluent, and native speakers can’t tell that I didn’t grow up in Germany (I speak an accent-free Hochdeutsch). Despite my rather good grip on the language, I have occasional gaps in my German vocabulary; particularly when the discussion topic gets esoteric, niche, or dives into the specifics of a profession and all the nomenclature that comes along with it. Recently I’ve been having this problem when trying to discuss creative writing.
My problem:
A large part of the vocabulary that I use when describe crafting a narrative in English includes words such as:
narrative, fiction, genre, theme, setting, plot arc,
character traits, cliche, trope, story element, Sci-Fi,
Fantasy, worldbuilding, pacing, rising action, climax,
resolution, backstory, story, etc.
From what I’ve been able to find, many of these words don’t translate, are just used as English, or loose some of the contextual meaning that they have in English. Take for example a common translation of the word “Narrative” into German could be “Erzählung”–to me it just doesn’t sound/feel quite right, Erzählung has a more spoken-word feeling to it and is less powerful than the concept of “Narrative”.
Currently, whenever I talk to someone about creative writing in German, I inevitably drop into denglish but I’d like to fix that. Where can I find some resources or German nomenclature to replace my English one?
The word "narrative" you use as example has a direct German translation: Narrativ (it comes from the latin verb "narrare", "to tell"). The translation "Erzählung" is IMHO wrong from the start, although you seem to have a slightly off definition of "Erzählung" as a literary category. The translation for "Erzählung" would be "novel".
Here is a translation for your list of words, to the best of my knowledge. Notice that some of the words are simply the same because they are derived from latin/greek roots:
I hope this helps.
bakunin
Answered by bakunin on October 25, 2021
Given your issue with the word “narrative”, I would suggest perhaps the following two books (in English) which focus on giving the reader multiple german synonyms for english words.
"A Practical Dictionary of German Usage" by K. B. Beaton – Amazon link here
"Dictionary of German Synonyms 3rd Ed" by R. B. Farrell – Amazon link here
They might not indeed contain comprehensive technical words, but are excellent references for words that have many-to-many mappings between German and English.
Both books on Amazon offer “look inside”, so you can see whether the style of their content is what you require. Curious to get your feedback.
Answered by Satish Vasan on October 25, 2021
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