Not a great joke, I’m afraid. Just playing on the idea that conformity in American consumerism makes the hot dog popular, and so the bratwurst becomes an act of resistance against that conformity. (Especially humorous in that it isn’t particularly close to true.)
And the famous quote I mentioned above about injustice and resistance.
Not everybody’s cup of tea, I understand, but then everybody’s not closely related to me.
Hm. Probably using ‘frankfurter’ would undermine the consumerist conformity aspect, so I should probably just stick to ‘hot dog.’
So would it be: “Wenn das gesetz hot dog wird, wird die pflicht bratwurst”?
There’s a danger of understanding this the wrong way around, e.g. as duty itself becoming bratwurst, though. I would say, “Wenn Hot Dogs Gesetz sind, ist Bratwurst Widerstand”. Although I couldn’t tell you why I’d put “Bratwurst” as a singular—to me, it simply sounds better, referring to “the bratwurst” in the abstract.
This German thinks that the Google translation is actually the best proposal in this thread so far.
There is however a difference in perceived meaning of the phrase “Hot Dog”. A “Hotdog” (typically spelled as one word in German) is a perfectly normal loan word in German, that nearly anyone here in Germany would be familiar with. The difference in perception is, that the sausage alone is never a “Hotdog”, it is always the combination of a soft, longish bun, a “Bockwurst”-style sausage and some optional condiments (mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, …), pickles and crisp fried onion. The staple hotdog nearly any German knows is served at Ikea. The sausage alone would be a Bockwurst (or a number of other regional variations thereof like Frankfurter Würstchen, Wiener Würstchen, Brühwurst, or many more). Btw: A soft, long bun filled with a Bratwurst with condiments would also be considered a “Hotdog”. It is mostly the (soft!) bun, that defines a hotdog in German, not the sausage.
One more thing has to be considered: The Phrase “Wenn Hot Dogs obligatorisch sind, wird Bratwurst Widerstand” might carry some sort of cultural isolationism or anti-Americanism: A “Hotdog” is perceived as a foreign food, namely as either American or Danish food (or maybe Swedish, thanks to Ikea). Using Hotdog (as a vehicle for American culture) and Bratwurst (as a vehicle of traditional German culture) in your phrase could thus be perceived as a call to resistance against Americanization of German culture.
To avoid any intercultural connotations I would suggest the following phrase: “Wenn Bockwurst obligatorisch ist, wird Bratwurst Widerstand”
To stress the consumerist aspect that you mention in your explanation, you might want to abandon sausage-themed examples for something else. You might use “Wenn der Smoothie zur Pflicht wird, wird das Glas Saft zum Widerstand”. Or “When der Latte Macchiato zur Pflicht wird, wird das Kännchen Kaffee zum Widerstand”
In that case you get the opposition of consumerist fruit smoothies or coffee creations against the more traditional things like a glas of fruit juice or “normal” filtered coffee
IIRC the Romans didn’t have forks as eating utensils. And furca is a pitchfork. I suppose a neologism could be furcula - little pitchfork. I suggest substituting spoon.
How about Tene ligulam, nos esuri - hold (your) spoon, we are about to eat?
But as ever, you don’t want a literal translation, you want something which translates the sense of the phrase, and as I’m unfamiliar with the expression, I’ll leave that to others.
Totally within the spirit of what I’m trying to communicate!
Fascinating. I just automatically mistrust Google Translate for pretty much anything. I’m grateful that you’ve clarified that the bun defines the hot dog for Germans, that would never have even occurred to me. I like your translation a lot - thank you very much!
Furcula does seem much better than “pitchfork,” neologism or not. “Pie” is an important part of the phrase (well, as much as anything here is important) - is there a Latin equivalent for pie?
If there is, Google Translate doesn’t seem to know what it is.
My Latin dictionary suggests furcilla for fork, and crustum for “pie”. (Also placenta, but first, placenta is more like “cake”, and second, ew.) So perhaps Tene furcillam, praebendum crustum est = “hold (your) fork, pie is about to be served”.
You’ve used the gerund there; you want the future participle. Instead of worrying about the word for fork, how about using the Latin word for cutlery, ferramentum?
Carpe ferramenta, nos esuri?
(I’m using the plural here because it sounds better.)
BTW is this pie as in pizza, blackberry & apple, or meat?
The German translation is straighforward, but the premise would be somewhat puzzling to a lot of Germans - do people often eat dessert with the same fork they used for the savoury courses in your part of the world?
Anyway, the German would be
[Behalte (informal)|Behalten Sie (formal)]* die Gabel, es gibt noch *[Kuchen (pie, US sense)|Nachtisch (dessert)].
