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u/Aggressive-Fig-8734 6d ago
If anything, that just shows you the abysmal quality of the translation.
For example "Staatswissenschaften" literally translates to the "science of the state" - which can have aspects related to macroeconomics, politology, law, political philosophy, etc. It's such a vague term, it's difficult to pin it down exactly - but it's definitely not just "economics".
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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 6d ago edited 6d ago
The translation should read something more like: Macro Economics (including national economics, economic poli-sci or social economics (VWL for short)) is a branch of broader economic science.
German using specific words for what English would use two or three words for is the fault here.
(For all the people correcting me: "something more like" is a qualification in my reply which means I did a rough translation off the cuff, not that I wanted to present myself as an expert in German words for economics.)
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u/Karcharos 6d ago edited 4d ago
German smashes words together. English keeps them separate. Both work.
EDIT: I'm aware English also does this :-) I'm being deliberately very general. It mostly made me think of the "the Inuit have (a bajillion) words for snow" idea. Most languages that are spoken in places where there's snow have many ways to describe different types of snow. The languages just operate differently.
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u/suimation 6d ago
“Germans have a single word for everything!” And it’s just 5 words put together
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u/Miiyamoto 6d ago
Fun fact: Economia is also smashed together. Together is smashed together. English and other languages do it too.
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u/DisorderedArray 6d ago
Well, I'm the captain of a steamboat society based on the Danube, and I'll give you my hat before I start smashing sentences together to make words!
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u/Athunc 6d ago
*steam boat
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u/DisorderedArray 6d ago
That's one of the areas where English wins. Steam boat society is not the same as steamboat society.
But you still make a good point! :D
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u/CreepyBluejay5927 5d ago
Did you, in that capacity, also work on the cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law (or Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz for short) by any chance?
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u/SpeedBorn 5d ago
I am leader of the governmental office that supervises said steamboat society on the danube and I concur with this statement.
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u/alendit 6d ago
Literally 5 words in a trench coat (or "Trenchcoat" as we say it in German).
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u/RyanE19 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yea but still, those words can have a meaning that don’t represent the sum of all words. E.g. Finger (finger) + Spitze (tip) + Gefühl (feeling) = Fingerspitzengefühl (when you do something very precise). But now it’s neither about fingers, nor a tip, nor is it really a feeling but more of a trait, like being efficient or being creative. It’s not the only language that does that.. going from literal to poetically but German is the perfect language for that because you can create like kinda anything with it and it’s the rule how Germans create new words in day to day life aswell as in acadamia, not the exception.
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u/LiveLoveCodeRepeat 6d ago
What I really love about German is the combination of words that contradict each other. „Trauerfeier“ = „mourning party“
Or the combinations that sound weird. „Leichenschmaus“ = „corpse feast“
Or great legal terms like „freiwillig pflichtversichert“ = „voluntarily obligated insured“
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u/Rudollis 6d ago
That‘s not really what Fingerspitzengefühl means. It means you can tactfully handle a situation. It‘s not about efficiency. It‘s about how you can manage a complicated situation or delicate matter without offending anyone or stepping on their toes.
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u/Renbellix 6d ago
You both are right, the word can be used in both situations, it still doesn't have anything to do with fingers / fingertips so the point he made still stands tho.
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u/Lykanas 6d ago
The best oart about German is that you can create any word you want if you smash words together! Like a Plasmaaustauschfluppidiwuppmammutfellrelais as seen in the adventure game Goodbye Deponia (Deponia 3)
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u/Nannautu 6d ago
It's 5 basic words put together. Like you don't have a word for gloves but call them shoes for hands
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u/Significant-Nebula64 6d ago
Yeah, only difference is the missing space, really. (And sometimes English adds an "of" or whatever, which really just makes it longer?)
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u/OssifiedCone 6d ago
I (a german, go figure) prefer the smushing.
Nice to know whether or not someone is talking about a big cat or a big cat.→ More replies (1)•
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u/Mojert 6d ago
Honestly English and German work pretty much the same in that regard. It's just that English decides to use a space whereas German doesn't
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u/Healthy_Koala_4929 6d ago
"Vermeintlich" will be translated to something like "supposedly". But in actuality, it specifically means "to believe something erroneously".
English has no word for this, which doesn't mean you can't express this idea - you just can't do it with one word. German word construction allows you to put together "ver", which is a prefix that carries the meaning of doing something wrongly, or moving away from something, with the word meinen, which means to think or be of the opinion of something. So it's not just putting words together. The mechanics of the German language can take words, prefixes and suffixes to construct new meanings.
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u/Bealdor84 6d ago
German here. From my POV the German language is keeping words together while English rips them apart.
Why should one use multiple words to name a single object / term / whatever. It's much more logical to me to describe those with a single word instead of multiple ones.
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u/Butternut_Coil 6d ago
German smashes "some* words together
Just because composite words exist in the German language, doesn't mean that the diversity in vocabulary just goes back to that
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u/Michi_am_Start 5d ago
But this way you can make enormous words to scare people. 😃
"Machetenherstellungslehrlingshutmacherhammerkopfherstellungsfirmencheff"
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u/Vegetable_Bit_5157 6d ago edited 6d ago
English also does that, but the barrier to do it is higher. In German you can do it on the fly, in English it can take a long time of common use before it (maybe) happens organically - but it can also happen quick if an equivalent already exists.
Because English of course also has plenty of compound nouns that started out separately. Tooth-brush, bed-room, foot-ball, etc. If I "invented" a new type of room that a lot of people adopt, say, one dedicated for your cats to live in, it may be called "the cat room" - but only perhaps also "the catroom" in a short time. In German, there would not even be a question - this new room would immediately be a "Katzenzimmer".
And I feel there is some merit to saying "Germans can just make up new words like this" - obviously you can do that in any language, just not as compound words, but it feels in German you then already end up with a "finished concept", when hearing it, while in english, it's more like the explanation of an idea. But that could be my linguistic bias. "A room for a cat" or a "cat room" feels more removed from "this is a thing" than "Katzenzimmer" to me.
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u/on_spikes 6d ago
except sometimes when english does it too. 'whiplash' being whip and lash for example.
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u/Parcours97 5d ago
English is just incredibly inconsistent when it comes to smashing words together. For example toothbrush should be two words in modern English.
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u/Gonozal8_ 4d ago
and chinese/japanese have no interpunctuation between characters and words. so good luck figuring out that little red light means infrared and not a small, not bright like lamp in red, if you don’t already now
the advantage of composite words is that you can differentiate descriptors and official terms better. such as Kleinstadt and Großstadt having defined sizes which you can estimate, while große Stadt (big city) could just be a city I subjectively find big. we also don’t do random renaming like cow meat to veal as often, so you can often understand the meanings of composite words from the parts it’s constituted of
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u/MobofDucks 6d ago
Naah, Macro Economics is a specific subfield of VWL. Volkswirtschaftslehre is the only part that would be translated as "just" economics here.
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u/Corfiz74 6d ago
I don't know why you got downvoted, you're absolutely right - VWL contains macro economics, micro economics and lots of other stuff like economic policy - just translating it with macro is definitely wrong.
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u/Beneficial-Bid-8850 6d ago
Volkswirtschaftslehre is not just Macroeconomics, it's Economics (incl. Microeconomics).
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u/DarthArcanus 6d ago
Anyone who translates seriously will rarely use "this means exactly."
Many words do not translate easily across language barriers. There's a reason Google Translate hasn't replaced professional translation. There's nuance and subtleties in language.
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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 6d ago
It isn't my day job and I didn't intend to imply it was.
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u/DarthArcanus 6d ago
Oh, I'm sorry, I was agreeing with you! I was agreeing when you pointed out that you can't simply 1 to 1 translate a word and expect the nuance to come through!
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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 5d ago
Oh, sorry, I was getting a bit of flack for my translation and might have been testier than I needed to be there.
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u/RazzmatazzNeat9865 6d ago
"Economic poli sci" isn't a thing. What you mean is political economy.
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u/PortableDoor5 6d ago
but political economy also means different things for economists and political scientists
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u/Lumpenokonom 6d ago
No this is wrong. There just isnt a direct translation as Germans call Business and Economics Wirtschaftswissenschaften. All of these terms mean in principle the same thing, which is economics but these terms are just outdated.
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u/MallAgreeable5538 6d ago
I wouldn’t auch translates to including, it would more translate to “also called”
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u/bademanteldude 6d ago
The "including" is already wrong. The "auch" here should be translated as something like "also known as".
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u/SnooSeagulls9002 5d ago
Macro economics isn't the translation of VWL, it's merely one part of it.
Proving just how difficult it is to translate VWL, as far as I know there really isn't an identical translation in English, the closest would probably be economics, but that doesn't properly fit either, since it encompasses both the German VWL and BWL.
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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 4d ago
Yeah looking at the Wikipedia article had macroeconomics as a subdivision of the concept (translated from a completely different word), so best I can tell there is a distinction there that we don't normally make in English.
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u/Kaszrak 6d ago
or perhaps that its... faked?
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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 6d ago edited 6d ago
Typing the German the directly into google translate would be:
Economics (also known as national economy, political economy, or socio-economics; abbreviated VWL in German) is a subfield of economic science.
Which would still be a bit clunky I think. What I had assumed the person did was reverse engineer the sentence when they saw that their translation was simplifying everything into just "economics".
However it's the first sentence on Wikipedia for Volkswirtschaftslehre so it's at least a bit plausible that the person has some clunky translation software and encountered that article in the wild.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswirtschaftslehre
So I dug deeper and Google tells me this image is from 2017 and the glitch was fixed by having better translation features.
Which is also how long it has been floating around reddit.
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u/notschululu 6d ago
Otherwise it just straight up becomes: „The Meme of this Memeplex is such a Meme.“
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u/Bigmooddood 6d ago
Political science?
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u/Aggressive-Fig-8734 5d ago
Not quite, though there is significant overlap.
PolSci would be "Politikwissenschaften"
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u/RaoulDukeRU 5d ago
The result would be completely different today. Back when online translators were still in their short pants, this could've been legit outcome.
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u/Tundralik 4d ago
It just shows that German is - at least in my opinion - the most precise language on this planet
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u/Certain_Match_6744 6d ago
I don't have any experience with german, but I think "Nationalokonomie" and "Sozialokonomie" at the very least do not mean the same thing
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u/Initial-Top7828 6d ago
They don’t! The first concerns itself with the economy surrounding the bigger picture around a country as a whole. A more appropriate way to translate it would literally be something like national economy (German and English are closely related). While the latter has aspects of social costs and the economics behind them. I do believe the English language has an appropriate translation to this, but the software being used is just poorly written.
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u/Lumpenokonom 6d ago
I dont know about Sozialökonomie, but Nationalökonomie is literally just an old word for economics
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u/Professional_Dig1334 6d ago
But even back then Nationalökonomie would probably not have been used in the context of the economy of a smal town for example. It still adds the context of viewing the economy on a national scale.
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u/RegorHK 6d ago
Not its not. Its a word for a field more focused or this would not be called so:
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u/Lumpenokonom 6d ago
I just told you the truth. If you still dont want to believe it ist your problem i guess.
Also an English book from non-German-speaking authors is not a convincing argument about the meaning of German words
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u/Curious-Run-2710 6d ago
Political economy (also national economy, economic state sciences, or social economics, abbreviated as VWL) is a subfield of economics
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u/Lumpenokonom 6d ago
No. VWL is economics. Wirtschaftswissenschaften means both Business and Economics.
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u/nibselfib_kyua_72 6d ago
Absolutely fake piece of crap or old as fuck. Try it yourself, the translation is not this
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u/Smartimess 6d ago
Not fake, just very old. One of the first iterations of Googlr Translate.
It had some gems like Alien vs. Predator = Ausländer gegen Fleischfresser (Foreigners vs. Meat-Eaters/Carnivores) tho.
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u/Doctor-Dinosaur 6d ago
It's not wrong though.
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u/SameResort2704 6d ago
It is wrong because no normal human outside the us uses alien for foreigners
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u/ErrorSchensch 6d ago
I mean it kindof is predator is more like "Raubtier" or smth, "Fleischfresser" would be either "carnivore" or just "meat eater"
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u/Grothgerek 5d ago
It's definitely fake. Because somehow the translation has 6 words in the brackets, while the original version only has 5. They literally didn't counted it correctly, when they faked it.
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u/Emergency-Town4653 6d ago
That's an idiotic translation.
The study of political economics (as well as natinal economics, political science economics or or social economics abrivated VWL) is part of the economics science.
A completely normal sentence.
Volkswirtschaft: political economics
Volkswirtschaftlehre: study of political economics
Natinalökonomie: national economics
Wirtschaftliche Staatswissenschaften: economic political (state) science
Sozialökonomie: social economics
Wirtschaftswissenschaft: economic science (or simply economics)
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u/Queasy_Caramel5435 6d ago
"Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher."
Translation: When flies fly behind flies, flies follow flies.
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u/Aquilaatmaar 6d ago
In Dutch we also have this sentence, but we say:
“Als vliegen achter vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegensvlug.”Translation: “If flies fly behind flies, [then] flies fly flying fast.”
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u/Quirky_Armadillo_352 6d ago
those compound words really do go on forever huh
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u/Diacetyl-Morphin 6d ago
That's nothing, compared to other words. Like the world record in the guinness book comes from german.
The word is: "Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft"
In english, it is: "Danube Steamship Electricity Main Operating Works Construction Sub-Officials Company".
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u/Frontdackel 6d ago
Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaftskapital
And... I just created a new one that is just as valid. That's just how the german language works.
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u/sbstndrks 6d ago
The rules are very arbitrary, they only "count" things tgat are are 'official', because any kid with a notepad can take ten minutes and make a longer one. To make the 'longest word' not entirely meaningless, they do it this way.
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u/Diacetyl-Morphin 5d ago
It gets even better when such long words get combined with long sentences. "Mein Kampf" is a good example as a book, Hitler writes never-ending sentences that can go over three pages and contain a dozen sub-sentences.
It isn't a style anymore, to write like this in german today. But it was more like this when he wrote the book (which was in 1924 or 1925, when i remember it right)
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/FraaRaz 6d ago
Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbier
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u/Dazzler_wbacc 6d ago
Is this why the Greeks and Romans called them barbarians?
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u/JRBeeler 6d ago
I think it was just the romans that called them barbarians. The greeks mostly didn't shave either.
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u/dmigowski 6d ago
In case you wonder, it's Rhubarb Barbara Barbar Beard Barber Beer... I have no idea how my brain understands that immediately.
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u/LeftLiner 6d ago
There's nothing wrong with compound words, or sammanslagningsord. Anyway I gotta go, I have to go pay my arbetslöshetsförsäkringsskyddsavgift.
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u/No_Blueberry_7120 6d ago
Economics (also known as national economics, economic state sciences, or social economics; abbreviated as VWL in German) is a subfield of economic science.
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u/TurbulentPrint4874 6d ago
Deepl gives me: Macro economics (also known as national economics, economic social sciences, or social economics; abbreviated as VWL) is a subfield of economic science.
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u/Acrobatic_Spare2320 5d ago
English and English speaking countries have no clear distinction between "Naturwissenschaften" and "Geisteswissenschaften", all of economics is just one big blob. This is ridiculous.
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u/Negative-Web8619 6d ago
Actual Google Translate translation:
Economics (also known as national economics, economic state sciences, or social economics) is a subfield of economic science. |
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u/Evening-Appeal7606 6d ago
May God also curse the shitty translator software that knows no nuance and subtlety but conflates broadly similar meanings into a generic term.
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u/Throwawayyy74745 6d ago
Interesting that the english language isn't nuanced enough to have any different names for these words.
Deutsch ist großartig.
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u/Struppii 6d ago
„Economics (also known as national economy, political economy or social economy; abbreviated to ‘VWL’) is a branch of economic science.“
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u/Shadrol 6d ago
Let's cognate this. (Adding dashes for english readers)
Die Volkswirtschaftslehre (auch Nationalökonomie oder wirtschaftliche Staatswissenschaften kurz VWL) ist ein Teilgebiet der Wirtschaftswissenschaft.
The Folk-wardship-lore (also National-economics or wardshiply State-witship short FWL) is a part of Wardship-witship.
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u/Beneficial-Bid-8850 6d ago
It would be closer to this: Economics (also National Economics, Economic Sciences of State/Political Economy or Social Economy, abreviated VWL) is a part of the economic sciences.
Other economic sciences are business administration and econometrics.
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u/Darthplagueis13 6d ago
The translator kind of just blundered there.
A better translation would be something like "Political economical studies (also known as national economics, economical state science or social economics, abbreviated as PES) are a branch of economical sciences."
Less of a peculiarity with the German language and more so the software always landing on the same meaning in the dictionary.
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u/dvorak06 5d ago
"Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher." "Aluminiumminimumimmunität"
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u/roy-the-rocket 6d ago
"The quality of your thoughts is capped by the quality of your language" (or similar)
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u/Weak_Shoulder_6780 6d ago
Shows that english is basically simplified peasant German under the hood.
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u/Zweefkees93 6d ago
As a Dutch guy that understands German.... The translation is absolut trash. not bad, just downright wrong
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u/RevyVanguardist 6d ago
This translation just sucks ass
(The Study of) Economics (also called National Economy), Economic State Sciences or Social Economics, abbreviated as BA, [short for "Business Administration"] (includes almost every field related to Politics, not just Economics) is a subfield of the Economic Sciences
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u/SiofraRiver 6d ago
I recently noticed how garbage google translate is with edge cases, so I guess that goes for any automated translation.
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u/RuMarley 6d ago
That's just a shitty translation actually. Google sucks
Macroeconomics - also referred to as national economics, national economic sciences, or social economics (abbreviated VWL [in German]) - is a subfield of economic sciences.
More like this actually.
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u/Exotic_Call_7427 6d ago
The Study of National Economics (also known as National Economics, State Business Studies / Social Economics), is a part of Business Studies.
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u/whitedevilee 6d ago
Yeah.... lets just ignore that all these "economics" are totaly different parts of the whole economics system.
This tranlsator looks like Google Translate from 1990.
Here is the same text translated with Google Translate:
Die Volkswirtschaftslehre (auch Nationalökonomie, Wirtschaftliche Staatswichenschaften oder Sozialökonomie, kurz VWL), ist ein Teilgebiet der Wirtschaftswissenschaft.
National economics (also known as political economy, public economics, or social economics; abbreviated as VWL) is a branch of economics.
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u/PaulTrebor 6d ago
While many rightfully point out the poor quality of the translation, translating it into English is not trivial as German academic traditions in this field are not congruent with Anglo-Saxon ones. E.g., wirtschaftliche Staatswissenschaft is neither political science nor political economy in the US or British sense.
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u/corsaire-21 6d ago
This highlights the limited range of vocabulary in English and the lack of precision
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u/Due_Job781 6d ago
The macro economics (also national economics, economical state sciences or social economics, VWL for short) are part of the economical sciences.
"Economical state sciences" would be more akin to political science economics.
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u/JustHereToGain 6d ago
„Hund, Katze, Pferd, Hamster, Vogel, Käfer, Spinne“
Übersetzung:
„Animal, animal, animal, animal, animal, animal, animal.“
The Germany language is *epic.*
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u/ramy_stereo 6d ago
yes it's so hilarious how all of these words mean the same thing when you completely mistranslate them, i'm rolling on the floor right now
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u/WrestlerGirlsAreLife 6d ago
This is the same principle as looking at a fruit basket and calling each different thing in there just fruit.
Additionally „auch“ in this case means „also known as“ and not „including“
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u/DerKleinerKiffer 6d ago
These all have different meanings. I was not confused until I read the english "translation".
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u/Independent-Clue1422 6d ago
For anyone interested what it actually says: (It's the introduction of German Wikipedia entry on 'political economics')
Political Economics (also called 'national economics', 'economic state studies' or 'social economics', shortened in German as VWL) is a field within the broader studies of economics.
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u/TheDuck0 6d ago
Or just
Economics (also known as national economics, economic state sciences, or socio-economics) is a subfield of economic science.
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u/DenizSaintJuke 6d ago
"Macro-Economic science (also know as national-economics, economic political/state science or social economics, short MEC) is a disciplin of economic science."
Note that "economics (what the economy is doing in the great outside)" and "economics (the scientific field of studying economics)" is a distinction. "Lehre" is similar to "-logy" in Biology. "The teachings of.../the study of...". And Wirtschaftswissenschaften literally means "economic sciences".
Not sure about english, but Volkswirtschaftslehre (concerning the national or international level of economics) and Betriebswirtschaftslehre (concerning business level economics) are different things in German. One problem is, in both the german and english speaking world, that politicians and some economists have taken to applying the second discipline to the first field of economics. Thinking of the national economy in the same terms as of the economy of a single household or a business. Which is certainly nice if you're a corporation or billionaire, but really bad news if you're a country or a citizen chained to one and unable to just move your assets to the Cayman islands.
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u/Menkes20 6d ago
I mean the word „auch“ in the brackets mean the words coming after this are synonyms, not „including“
Kurz means its the shortform.
English just sums them up in the same word.
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u/AdElectronic4912 6d ago
You can tell they once had a spectacular economic crash and will not let that happen again.
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u/nameproposalssuck 5d ago
Bad translation deepl translates it the following:
Economics (also known as national economics, political economy or social economics; abbreviated to ‘Econ’) is a branch of the economic sciences.
ChatGPT:
Economics (also known as national economics, political economy or social economics; abbreviated as “VWL”) is a subdiscipline of the economic sciences.
Gemini:
Economics (also referred to as national economics, political economy, or social economics; abbreviated as 'VWL') is a branch of economics and business studies.
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u/buletproof_bob 4d ago
If I didn't know about terrible translations I might assume that it's the English language lacking quite a lot of useful material
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u/t_scytale 4d ago
Some languages will tend to use a more specific word, where other languages will prefer to qualify an existing word. Plus some languages let you condense qualifiers. Here's an example contrasting English and Spanish:
> I am faimiliar with Braizing, soldering, MIG, TIG and stick welding.
> Tengo conocimientos de soldadura fuerte, soldadura blanda, soldadura MIG, TIG y soldadura por arco eléctrico.
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u/lobotomy_ 4d ago
Economics (also known as national economics, economic policy science, or social economics, abbreviated as VWL) is a subfield of economic science.
is what google has to say about this these days.
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u/Fantastic_Return_762 3d ago
So it's like the Doctor who episode where he's got to teach a science class for a few minutes and he just keeps saying science because I guess the translation for the high-level concepts of the universe that he was trying to impart on the students just came back to science in English
So I guess the Germans are the hyper advanced aliens of economics
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