The Art of Translation

BECKENBAUER in BILD:
„Dummerweise haben die Engländer als Gruppenzweiter ein bissel gepatzt.“    X sound: Beckenbauer,dummerweise.mp3

SUN:
"Stupidly, the English have slipped up a little by finishing second in their group.

NEWS OF THE WORLD:
'Der Kaiser' has already derided Fabio Capello's team for playing 'kick and rush' football and now his English sources claim he's said they're 'stupid' to finish second in their group (A better translation is that England 'messed up a little' but it doesn't make for as good a story).

Comment by blogger:
Please learn the German language. He didn's say 'stupid', he said 'dummerweise' which means 'unfortunately' in Southern Germany, where he is from.
By Bavaria.. Posted June 24 2010 at 6:03 PM.

FREE REPUBLIC: 2 BLOGS:

# 1: C19fan
The last time someone holding the title of Kaiser opened their pie hole too many times the English gave him an arse kicking, hee hee.

 posted on Donnerstag, 24. Juni 2010 13:29:02 by C19fan

#2: (reply by) wolf78
The last time someone holding the title of Kaiser opened their pie hole too many times the English gave him an arse kicking, hee hee.

Except this is just more complete, utter bullshit from the Sun.
The original quote from Beckenbauer reads like this in German:

Dummerweise haben die Engländer als Gruppenzweiter ein bissel gepatzt.

"Dummerweise" doesn't refer to the English team here, but to the situation in general. The literal translation would be "in a stupid way", meaning "unfortunately". So what Beckenbauer actually said was:

Unfortunately the English have slipped up a bit finishing second in their group., expressing his disappointment to have such a classic match this early in the tournament.
Quote Beckenbauer: Ein solches Spiel sollte ein Halbfinale sein, nicht schon ein Achtelfinale., i.e. "[the pairing] should have been a semifinal instead".

So if anyone deserves an arsekicking for opening their pieholes it's the SUN staff for deliberately mis-translating Beckenbauer's column. Hopefully the German team will deliver an appropriate answer this weekend ;).

posted on Donnerstag, 24. Juni 2010 14:52:21 by wolf78