Sprachmittlung: Situational mediation between German and English
What this part tests
Sprachmittlung is a compulsory part of the written Abitur. You receive a German source text (sometimes several short ones) plus a situation: a defined addressee, a purpose and a target text type - email, letter to the editor, blog comment, notes for a presentation, short article. You mediate the relevant content into English. This is not translation: you select, condense, restructure and explain. Marking rewards communicative appropriateness - does the English text work for that reader in that situation? - alongside accuracy and coverage of the required points.
Core rules and concepts
- Read the task first: Adressat, Anlass, Zieltextsorte and the bullet points you must cover. Only content serving those points belongs in your text.
- Keep the target text's conventions: salutation and sign-off in an email, headline in an article, headings in slides.
- Match register to the relationship: a letter to a British host family is not an academic essay.
- Explain culture-specific items briefly instead of translating them literally: 'the Abitur (the German school-leaving exam that qualifies students for university)', 'the dual system of vocational training', 'a Schultüte (a cone of sweets given on a child's first day of school)'.
- Omit what the addressee does not need; compression is a marked skill, not a loss.
- Add no opinions, facts or statistics absent from the source.
Worked example
Source: 'Rund die Hälfte eines Jahrgangs beginnt eine duale Ausbildung: Die Azubis schließen einen Vertrag mit einem Betrieb und besuchen ein- bis zweimal pro Woche die Berufsschule.' Task: an email to a British exchange partner explaining routes after school in Germany. Weak: 'Half of a year begins a dual education. The trainees close a contract with a business and visit the vocational school.' Better: 'About half of German school-leavers start the dual system: they sign a training contract with a company and spend one or two days a week at a vocational college.' Reasoning: 'Jahrgang' is a cohort, not 'a year'; 'close a contract' is Denglish for 'sign'; 'duale Ausbildung' needs a short gloss, not a literal compound. The better version keeps the concept, drops nothing essential and reads as natural English.
Traps that cost marks
- Word-for-word transfer producing Denglish ('We write the Abitur', 'it is common to make a Praktikum').
- Covering every source detail and ignoring the word limit.
- Forgetting the text-type frame - no salutation, no sign-off, no subject line.
- Shifting into a register that does not fit the addressee.
- Translating institution names instead of explaining them.