# Translating into your native language: Does it sound or appear stilted, or not quite fluent? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 13, 2011, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831 "2011-07-13T03:59:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/21 "2011-07-13T19:12:13Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > “lara-lappa,”… “Adi tappa”…[T]hese phrases come with a lot of cultural baggage, too. Baggage for an interesting trip, indeed–but I like all kinds of travel. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/22 "2011-07-13T19:24:15Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Baggage for an interesting trip, indeed–but I like all kinds of travel. I suppose I meant more “cultural references” but I’m glad I did it wrong because - what a poetic response you had! ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/23 "2011-07-13T19:50:28Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Does anyone else notice this in their own translations? Same thing for me. I guess it’s a tendancy to translate too literary, when in fact one would need to make massive changes. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/24 "2011-07-13T21:10:52Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > German to English can get very tricky - especially due to most of the German verbs landing at the end of sentences, and then trying to re-place them in correct order in English. > There are also quite a few idioms that don’t translate directly, and you need to improvise with an equivalent English idiom. > On the fly - translating word for word - German to English is odd; you have to wait until the entire German sentence is finished before you can begin to speak. So while you are now working on that sentence, the speaker is on to the next! German uses SOV (subject, object, verb) word order only in certain constructions. Simple verb phrases are SVO, same as in English, nicht war? There are many SOV languages all over the world. In fact, SOV is the typology used by the most number of languages in the world. Our SVO comes in second place. For a very brief sampling off the top of my head, Amharic, Burmese, Georgian, Hindi (+all the Indo-Aryan languages), Japanese, Korean, Lakhota, Mongolian, Panjabi, Persian, Quechua, Somali, Tamil (+all the Dravidian languages), Tatar, Tibetan, Turkish (+all the Turkic languages, Urdu… are SOV all the time. Latin and Hungarian go SOV a lot of the time too. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/25 "2011-07-13T22:14:42Z")
I’ve also noticed this. I think I’m worse going from Dutch into English, because the two languages are very similar, but not so similar that you can do a word for word translation. Going from Auslan into English, the grammar is so different, you have to completely remake the sentence anyway, so it often comes out as more natural English. But making an accurate translation from Auslan is much harder when it includes a lot of spatial information and I can’t decide if it’s relevant or not. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/26 "2011-07-14T04:51:24Z")
Something else that affects this, and which is even harder to deal with, is that cultures differ in the manner they express themselves. For example, even when dealing with the same subject, Spanish tends to be more flowery (some would say long-winded) than English. Even if the translation is accurate and idiomatic, it’s going to sound somewhat different than the way an English writer would typically write about a subject. I once was reading an article in English and realized it had been translated from German when the author started to describe some overly-detailed classification scheme.😉 ---
**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/27 "2011-07-14T06:03:43Z")
After having lost my Bavarian accent when we came to the US, I find myself speaking what is called “Hoch-Deutsch” (literally “high German” which is that broadcast voice you referred to upthread) when I go home on vacation. I also speak slowly and watch my enunciations at those times. Yeah, it sounds stilted and have been told as much, and after a few days, hearing the accent again makes me respond in kind. Q ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831/28 "2011-07-14T12:07:19Z")
Translation is just plain hard, regardless of your fluency in both languages. I can understand 99% of everything said in normal, Mexican Spanish (aside from specific industry/technical jargon and youngster street slang), and I can speak it convincingly (similar limitations as previously described), and with a good spell checker I can even write it convincingly (but, think Ernest Hemingway rather than John Steinbeck), but God help you if you ask me to translate it into English (my native language). Actually, until my recent move, people asked me to translate all the time. It sucked, and I’m certain that it looked (to them) that I had no comprehension of Spanish. In order to do a good job, I’d really have to grok the Spanish, and re-write everything in my own words completely. I kind of think I’m going to have to do the same thing now, except it will be translating someone else’s translated English into English. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translating-into-your-native-language-does-it-sound-or-appear-stilted-or-not-quite-fluent/588831.md?page=1)