grammar

[Sue Blake]

On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 01:42:08AM +0200, Andi Scharfstein wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> >> > Recently I provided some IT staff with the documentation for a
> >> > new piece of software. Many times it said things like "In case
> >> > Foo, do Bar". The users (correctly in my view) read that as
> >> > advice of a precaution worth taking, and took it.
> >> 
> >> Could this be a .us-vs-.au issue?
> 
> > Possibly. If so, I wonder which way the rest of the world goes.
> 
> Given this particular instruction, I would have done Bar only if Foo
> had occurred... but then again, I'm from Germany, and the terms "if"
> and "in case" translate to "falls" and "Im Falle" or "für den Fall,
> daß". I think you can easily see the linguistic relatedness.

If I can remember some tourist Deutsch from decades ago,
we might have soemthing like this:

 English               German

 in the case of        im Falle
 in case foo happens   ???
 when foo happens      (wenn?)
 if foo happens        wenn

I don't know if that's right, but if it is, perhaps to a German
speaker "if" has too many connotations of "when", so they feel
that using "in case" would make it clearer (but it confuses me).
But I suspect that it is English speakers who get confused over
wenn (myself particularly), not the reverse.

How would you handle, in German, "in case" as a precaution, e.g.

 In case you break a fan belt, take a spare.

Would that also use "im Falle"? If so, that might point to
the overlapping concepts that cause some of the confusion
in translation.

Let's take that a bit further.

 In case you break a fan belt, take a spare.
 If you break a fan belt, you will have a big problem.
 When you break a fan belt, replace it with the spare.
 In the case of breaking a fan belt, you would be pleased have a spare.

Does German differentiate between these sentences, using different words?

When Grog wakes up he might have a strong opinion on this.

-- 

Regards,
        -*Sue*-