German to English

July 10, 2009 3:13 PM

Can anyone please translate this short phrase into German? It's from the Rankin-Bass movie, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.

"Toys are hereby declared illegal, immoral, unlawful, and, anyone caught with a toy in his possession will be placed under arrest and thrown in the dungeon. No Kidding."

It's for a personal calligraphy project; positively no money or trade or any kind of profit involved.

If you can go different ways with a word or phrase, please lean toward umlauts. :)

Or if you have a suggestion for a different language I should use instead (I'm thinking Germanic traditions more than Myra/Turkey), then that would be even better (if you can translate it).

posted by rahnefan to writing & language (17 answers total)

I would render it thus:

"Spielzeuge werden jetzt für verboten, unmoralisch, und widerrechtlich erklärt, und jeder, der im Besitz von einem Spielzeug ertappt wird, wird festgenommen und in den Kerker geworfen werden. Kein Scherz."

'Illegal' can also be translated simply as illegal, but I figured verboten would be more recognizable to non-German-speakers. A native speaker could probably also better decide between the various ways to render 'caught.'
posted by jedicus at 5:58 PM on July 10, 2009

Thanks Jedicus! So Besitz, Spielzeug, Kerker, and Scherz should start with caps like that?
posted by rahnefan at 8:08 PM on July 10, 2009

Yeah, even common nouns are capitalised in German.
posted by ryanbryan at 8:36 PM on July 10, 2009

jedicus's answer is great. I'd change a few small things (native German speaker here):

"Spielzeuge werden hiermit für verboten, unmoralisch, und widerrechtlich erklärt, und jeder, der in Besitz eines Spielzeugs gefunden wird, wird festgenommen und in den Kerker geworfen. Wirklich."

No kidding's literal translation - Kein Scherz, Im Ernst, Kein Witz - looks a bit odd to me written down, even though it's perfectly alright in conversation. I'd use wirklich - really.
posted by insouciant at 11:44 PM on July 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Thanks insouciant! I forgot to add a fairly important thing though -- is there anything (in either translation) that simply wouldn't have been said a few centuries back? I'd like to avoid things that are overtly modern if possible.

Sorry! I guess that's kindof a big thing to omit...but it may not matter...
posted by rahnefan at 6:48 PM on July 12, 2009

And thanks ryanbryan too!
posted by rahnefan at 6:48 PM on July 12, 2009

Regarding avoid anachronisms: the phrase 'no kidding' only dates back to 1914, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, so the source already seems to have a bit of a problem with historical authenticity.

Unfortunately the Duden (probably the canonical German dictionary) does not provide the dates of earliest use of words. If someone who knows a good German source for such information could help out, then it should be possible to verify that there aren't any neologisms in the translation.

That said, if you want it rendered the way it would have been in, say, 1500 or so, then I can tell you that some of the words would be spelled differently, at least.

Also, a couple of aspects of insouciant's translation are more official or traditional sounding than mine: the use of the genitive case (eines Spielzeugs) instead of the dative (von einem Spielzeug) and the use of hiermit ('hereby', formal) instead of jetzt ('now'). So I would guess that insouciant's translation is already fairly accurate in terms of tone and historical accuracy.
posted by jedicus at 6:27 AM on July 13, 2009

You rock, man.
posted by rahnefan at 9:26 AM on July 13, 2009

Dangit. Why are all my "best answers" really from two different people? Thanks incouciant.
posted by rahnefan at 9:28 AM on July 13, 2009

You can mark insouciant's answer best as well (and I recommend it!). There's no limit to how many best answers there can be.
posted by jedicus at 10:48 AM on July 13, 2009

Ah....ENLIGHTENMENT...ty
posted by rahnefan at 11:26 AM on July 13, 2009

Again seconding jedicus. No kidding's German equivalent sounds very modern to my ears, no matter how it is translated, so I'd leave that out if you are going for a medieval touch.

And to make the sentence sound a bit more antiquated, I'd phrase it thusly (in a completely not-language-scholarly attempt):

Es sei hiermit verkündet, dass Spielzeuge verboten, unmoralisch und widerrechtlich sind. Ein jeder, der in Besitz eines Spielzeugs gefunden wird, wird in Gewahrsam genommen und in den Kerker geworfen.
posted by insouciant at 3:21 PM on July 13, 2009

Is Kein Scherz like saying "no joke" or "no jest?" I think I like that better than "really." The English version is also anachronistic, though I didn't think of that at first.
posted by rahnefan at 7:48 PM on July 13, 2009

One added bit to insouciant's antiquated version would be to spell dass as daß, so:

Es sei hiermit verkündet, daß Spielzeuge verboten, unmoralisch und widerrechtlich sind. Ein jeder, der in Besitz eines Spielzeugs gefunden wird, wird in Gewahrsam genommen und in den Kerker geworfen.

That gives you that extra German flavor, sort of like umlauts.

And yeah, Kein Scherz and Kein Witz would both mean 'no joke' or 'no jest.' Im Ernst means 'in seriousness' or 'seriously,' but as insouciant says all three are more common in speech than in writing. When you think about it, the 'no kidding' is kind of unusual in English as well, at least as a separate sentence fragment. I can think of very few signs in real life that have 'Seriously.' or 'No kidding.' tacked on to the end, so I think it was a sort of humorous addition in the movie.

To insouciant: I'm surprised you omitted the Eszett. The spelling reform must have been more effective than I would have thought.
posted by jedicus at 7:18 AM on July 14, 2009

Y'all rule. Should I infer that Eszett is the special character you mentioned? How does one pronounce it?
posted by rahnefan at 4:18 PM on July 14, 2009

Yes, the character in question is ß, also known as the Eszett or scharfes S. In German it is pronounced as an unvoiced or 'hissing' s, which is the normal English s: for example, sit, glass, stew, etc.

The German orthography reform of 1996 did away with many common uses of the ß, which is why including it gives the sentence a more archaic feel.
posted by jedicus at 6:13 PM on July 14, 2009

If you want to make it appear old/archaic at first glance, definitely do it in Fraktur script. Nice large examples of each letter found here if you poke around a bit.

(Note that the letter at the end of of the row showing umlauted letters is the Eszett.)
posted by flug at 9:33 AM on March 20, 2010