With its 120 million native speakers, German is the largest language in Western Europe. Just like Dutch, it belongs to the West Germanic branch of Germanic languages. It is the official language in three countries: Germany, Austria, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the official languages of Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium (East Cantons), Denmark (South Jutland), and Italy (South Tirol). In France (Alsace) and the former German colony of Namibia, German is still spoken, but not an officially recognized language. The places where there are still German communities due to mass emigration are numerous and spread across the world; from Russia, the United States, and Canada to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay.

German sometimes seems more like Dutch than German…

HGerman and Dutch are strongly intertwined, which is evidenced by the fact that Northern German regional languages seem more like Dutch than the Southern German regional languages. If Standard Dutch and High German (Hochdeutsch) had not existed, there would be no language boundary between the Netherlands and Germany; the dialects would cross over seamlessly (a so-called dialect continuum).

But despite their close relationship, the two languages have plenty of pitfalls. There are a lot of German words that look a lot like Dutch words, but have an entirely different meaning; think of Winkel (corner), See (lake), Meer (sea), calling (blaffen) and schlimm (bad).

In-country translators

Translation always involves cultural elements. Even in closely related languages like Dutch and German, the way in which the target group expresses itself in the other language needs to be taken into account when translating. Translations of direct, informal Dutch texts will need to be far more formal and less direct in German. Therefore, if we need to translate a text into German, we use an in-country translator, a German translator who lives and works in Germany, which means their language and cultural context is all around them on a daily basis.

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