Mediation / Language Transfer (Sprachmittlung)
What mediation is and is not
Mediation means transferring a message between languages so that it works for a specific reader in a specific situation - not translating. The Berlin Grundkurs paper typically supplies a German source text and an English-language scenario (an email to a partner school, a letter to a newspaper, a briefing for colleagues, a blog comment), occasionally the reverse direction. Assessment covers relevance and completeness of information, addressee orientation, register, and language accuracy.
Procedure
- Decode the situation: who communicates with whom, why, in which medium, at what level of formality.
- Mark the relevant passages and delete repetition, anecdotes, and statistics the reader does not need.
- Reorganise the syntax: German nominal style becomes English verbal style; split sentences of forty words; turn passive into active where it sounds natural.
- Handle Realien: gloss briefly (
the Abitur, the German school-leaving examination), use functional equivalents, avoid false friends (Gymnasium ≠ gym, Betrieb ≠ operation, Ausbildung ≠ education). - Check: can the target reader act on the text without the original? Is the tone consistent? Have you added any opinion?
Techniques worth naming in your own head
explicitation (explain an unknown institution), compression (cut detail), transposition (change word class), omission (drop the irrelevant), compensation (paraphrase what has no equivalent).
Worked example
Source: Die duale Ausbildung, also die Kombination aus Betrieb und Berufsschule, gilt als ein Standbein des deutschen Bildungssystems.
Task: explain this to a British exchange partner in an email.
Draft: Germany's dual vocational training system, which combines training at a company with lessons at a vocational school, is regarded as one of the pillars of the German education system.
Reasoning: duale Ausbildung has no direct equivalent, so a relative clause explicates it; Betrieb is a company, not an operation; Standbein becomes the idiom pillar, not standing leg; neutral present tense is kept. A literal rendering - the dual education, so the combination from enterprise and vocational school - fails on idiom and syntax even though every single word is correct.
Traps that cost marks
- Word-for-word transfer that keeps German word order and compound nouns.
- Translating everything instead of selecting what the reader needs.
- Omitting the framing the scenario demands: greeting, purpose, closing.
- Adding your own evaluation of the source.
- False friends and pseudo-anglicisms (Handy, Beamer, public viewing).
- Contractions and slang in a formal letter to a head teacher.