Slang "no brainer" -- a challenge for translators

[Chris F Waigl]

Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:

>   The German borrowing that still has me wondering is "das Baby" (taken from English with the exact same pronunciation).  I understand the need to borrow technological terms (e.g., der Computer) or other terms for concepts that aren't yet present in one's language.  But babies?
> Why did the Germans find it necessary or desirable to introduce this word from English?
>
>
German isn't alone here: French used to borrow _baby_, too, and indeed
late 19th century novels and diaries are full of childcare terms
borrowed from English (_nursery_ ...). I don't know for German, but the
explanation I've heard for French had to do with the upper and upper
middle classes employing English nursemaids, and indeed giving small
children an entirely new place in the household. This came with the
desire to name entities that wouldn't have been named before, by the
same people (while for example medical terms may have existed). In
French, _bébé_ -- which as far as I can tell existed earlier in French,
but didn't come with connotations of posh English nursemaids -- won out
in the 20th century. In German, _Baby_ stuck around (and got its own
Germanized plural spelling as of the latest spelling reform).

Borrowing is much more complex than it's often seen. It's not always
motivated by need, and indeed there are usually  alternatives to
borrowing, more or less straightforward ones, even for technical terms:
loan translations and metaphors for example. Fads, dissemination of
cultural elements complete with vocabulary (we could say "soy bean
curd", but "tofu" sounds so much more appealing), playfulness and
aesthetics play a role, too. Then there's the often forgotten point that
monolingualism is the exception, not the norm, so that terms filtering
between languages doesn't actually take much of a reason, often enough.

I don't use "der Computer" in my professional writing; I do call the
thing Computer in informal German, though.

Last, German and French speakers are indeed borrowing lots of English --
it bears the mark of coolness -- but also invent their own. When the
head of my employer's German office came to London recently he expected
to be able to use a "beamer" for his presentation. Someone had to step
in and translate this into _video projector_. And even I have given up
and am using a "Handy" now -- the thing and the word. There are
collections of faux Anglicisms now.

Chris

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