The Origami Forum

Dear German-speaking origamists,

I am currently translating texts from Nicolas Terry's "Licence to Kill" and realised that I don't know some of the origami terms in German, because all of my complex origami books are in English or Japanese. Of course, I could just make up my own translations, but if there are commonly accepted German terms, I would prefer to use those. The terms are

- crease pattern
- box pleating
- flap
- point split
- pleated graft

I would be grateful for suggestions (including "just use the English term").
Thanks,
Ariel

P.S. The texts make interesting reading as you will soon be able to judge for yourselves!

Sorry I can't help you with the translations, but good on you for doing that!
I'm sure it will be much appreciated.

I would not translate the first three maybe four words. Yes the first four.

For pleated graft i got no idea, sorry...

max

Max: Thanks for the advice.
I was thinking of "gefalteter Aufsatz" for "pleated graft", leaving the original in parentheses. I'm relieved to know that I'm not alone in my loss for words in Origami German. Luckily, most of the text is pretty easy to translate.

Quentin: Thanks for the encouragement. I figured that I am unlikely to contribute to the origami community anytime soon with new models and/or diagrams (much as I appreciate the efforts made by you and many other designers). Therefore, this offered a satisfactory alternate way of giving something back.

All the best,
Ariel

For flap I would use "Klappe". The term is used in the Book "Masters of Origami - Die Vielfalt der Faltkunst".

For crease pattern I think "Falzmuster" is a good translation.

I think I wouldn't translate box pleating.

I think it would be better to put just on the beginning of the book a sort of reference in witch the reader could find the original name (for example "Creased Pattern" with the german meaning explanation.

This because the specific terms should be used in the language they have been created, such as "papiroflexia" or "Le Crimp".

I mean, it is usefull a translaion of the meaning, but not sure about the translation of the term in itself

"Klappe" is the worst translation I ever read for flap.

- crease pattern

Faltmuster

- box pleating

Just leave it as it is. You could insert a footnote explaining that Boxpleating refers to a Crease Pattern that only consists of lines along 0/90/180/270 degrees (a grid with diagonals).

- flap

Depending on the case: Lage, Ecke, Spitze, Kante,... was halt gerade passt.

- point split

Teilen eines Punktes.

- pleated graft

That one is hard but I don't think that anyone can imagine something under "gefalteter Aufsatz" (an "Aufsatz" is a long written Text) I would rather go for something like "eingefügte Fläche" or maybe "durch Zick-Zack-Faltung eingefügte Fläche". I know that's long but it describes exactly what it is.

PS: You live in Melbourne, may I ask where you learned German?

Sorry I have to correct what I've said.

In the book "Masters of Origami - Die Vielfalt der Faltkunst" the term flap is not translated. "das Flap" is used.

But the books form Jens Helge Dahmen: "Origami aus Neptuns Reich" and "Blütenzauber mit Origami" use the term "Klappe".

Anna why do you think Klappe is a bad translation. It's a general term like flap is a general term in english.

None of the word you suggested mean really flap even if they could be used in some situations.

"Klappe" is something completely else, I wouldn't ever use it to describe a flap. The meanings I know are:
* a kind of door (e.g. Babyklappe)
* two wooden bars that can be smashed together (e.g. Filmklappe)
It may be that the word is used in a different way in Germany.
The word "Lage" describes a flap in my opinion very good.
Oh well and I remember the little diagram booklet I got at the "Masters of Origami" exhibition. You are right, "Klappe" can be topped, they used "Flappen".

Just to stir the pot a bit....

Ariel - I know that many German speakers will be very grateful for your translation of the text. I always appreciate it when people take the time to translate text into English. I know it is a lot of work, and it is highly commendable.

In the beginning, if there is a section for translator's notes, I recommend that you include a brief 'glossary' of the (non-standard) terms that you use or make up with their English equivalent in parentheses. From that point onward, you are free to use those terms throughout.

For consistency, you might look at the equivalent terms in Spanish and French (if you understand those languages) to see how they translate the terms.

Finally, as an English-speaker, I've noticed that many Germans understand English very well. So, I don't believe that a couple of technical terms will distract most people.

But I am curious about what you finally choose to do.

Also, this brings back the question raised a while ago... about the possibility of creating a multi-language glossary. I think the Forum covers at least 10 major languages and many more local languages.

- Hank Simon

The thing with this book is that there is a description of the artist and the model on the first page of each model. I think this is the main part where the translation is needed. This will be fairly easy, as it it "normal language" to translate.
Then there is the diagram text, which uses origami terms. I think as Hank mentioned, you can state in the beginning what translations you chose for certain terms.
The English terms will probably do for the most part, especially as both languages use the same (almost) alphabet.

Good Luck!

I appreciate the animated discussion. It has helped a lot. For example, I was thinking of "Aufsatz" in terms of "aufgesetzt", but I see now that it woud be confusing.

In general, I like the idea of a glossary, but I think that it would be overkill in this case, since I'm not translating any diagram texts. Most of the texts are introductions or biographies. The only exceptions are two design descriptions and then it will be sufficient to put the English term in parentheses.

I hope that people enjoy the result. It's been a bit of a rush job and I have a somewhat old-fashioned approach to language, preferring to avoid terms originating from other languages when a German term exists (i.e. using Entwurf instead of Design). However, I'm quite pleased with the translation and it has been fun to try and capture the different speech styles of the individual artists.

Anna, I grew up in Berlin, speaking English at home and German everywhere else. I only moved to Melbourne this January for job reasons, but with a German husband and many German speakers at my institute, I am in no danger of forgetting the language.

The native German speakers are obviously the ones best qualified to comment on what is acceptable in German, but I work as a translator and the following may be of some interest:

to graft = pfropfen
The German translation of Peter Engel's book "Origami from Angelfish to Zen" uses "propfen (auf)" where the original says "graft (onto)". It's a technical term (graft copolymer = Propfcopolymer), but the meaning is exactly the same.

box pleating
Steffen Gnam called this "Fächerfalten" / "Fächerfalttechnik" in his book, though he also added the English term by way of explanation. In textile engineering there are also terms such as "Kellerfalte" and "plissieren", which could maybe be applied to origami, though I'm not sure how it would sound to a German.

crease pattern
I've seen "Faltmuster" used quite a lot in German origami books.

flap
Anna's comment about "Klappe" is interesting. The term I've seen most often is "Spitze", including in the combination "Spitze/Tasche" for "flap/pocket" in modular origami. I checked some books originally written in German and also found "Ecke" (very common) and "Flügel" (only rarely), as well as a lot of descriptive words like "Eckenbereich", "Eckteil", "Kopfteil", "Zipfel", "Steg" and "Balken" in cases where I would probably have said "flap" in English. At one point Steffen Gnam refers to the other "Seiten" of a Bird Base, where we would say "repeat on the other flaps". In English you can of course also refer to things like "points" and "corners", but "flap" is a useful general term. In other contexts you can translate "Klappe" as flap, though not always.
"Klappe" does appear in some German books, but the examples I've seen are in translations from English (Nick Robinson's paper aeroplanes book and Peter Engel's book), so it's probably just a literal translation. Nick's "Papierflieger" mentions a "dreieckige Klappe", whereas other German books tend to talk about "das Dreieck" in similar contexts.

Like many scientific and technical terms, a lot of modern origami vocabulary originated in English, especially with people like Robert Lang, and there are no generally accepted equivalents in other languages (at least, not yet). I agree with Hank and Quentin that the best option is to include some kind of glossary with the original English terms and descriptive translations if there are no established German equivalents.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope it helps and wish you luck with your translation.

well than, maybe I should add a few comments.

to graft = pfropfen

the german term pfropfen is a botany term and surely doesn't belong into origami if you would like to use a botany term for "to graft", you should better use "okulieren" which I would call more elegant and means the same.
the best way to translate "to graft" would surely be "aufsetzten". so "pleated graft" means "aufgesetzte Falte".

I would not translate box-pleating because its a proper noun and doesn't need to be translated.

translating "crease pattern" with "Faltmuster" is perfect

the use of "flap" is hard to translate. I mainly descripe the part that needs to be folded like "das obere Dreieck wird gefaltet" (the top triangle will be folded) or use the term "Lagen". Lagen means "layers" and always did a good job for me. so if you say "falte die oberen beiden Lagen zusammen" you would say "fold the top two flaps/layers together". it mainly depends on what has to be folded. I hear the word "Lasche" for "flap" A LOT.

"point split" is simple, just say "der Punkt wird geteilt".

sometimes a word can't be translated with a word in another language but you can always find a workaround.

"Graft" is a technical term in English too. I don't know if Peter Engel was the first to use it in origami, but in his book (which is at least 20 years old now) it sounds like a new idea and he does comment that it's a term used in botany - in fact, he says he likes it because of the "organic" connotations. But it's quite possible that "pfropfen" sounds too strange in German and "aufsetzen" would be better.

"Flap" is definitely very context-dependent and doesn't seem to have a one-to-one translation. My feeling is that "Spitze" is probably only appropriate if it's a relatively long thin point. "Lasche" is an interesting alternative which I haven't encountered, but then again I don't meet up with German folders very often.

As mentioned above, the native German speakers are the best ones to answer these questions, but the subject interests me because I have to deal with this sort of problem all the time in my work (technical translation from German to English).