Sprachmittlung: situated mediation between German and Russian
Sprachmittlung is not translation. You are placed in a scenario – a Russian exchange student needs information from a German leaflet, or a German host family must understand a Russian email – and you convey the relevant content into the other language so that the addressee can act on it. Marks come from complete coverage of the communication points, correct register, and idiomatic target language; stylistic brilliance is secondary.
Core rules
- Fix four things before writing: who writes to whom, in which text type (E-Mail, Notiz, informelles Gespräch), with which purpose, and in which register (du/вы, Sie/du).
- Identify the communication points in the source (usually four to six) and tick them off in your draft. Omissions cost more than stylistic weakness.
- Compress. Examples, repetitions and rhetorical flourishes may be dropped if the information survives.
- Never add information, opinions or explanations that the source does not contain.
- Keep proper names, addresses and numbers exact; transliterate consistently.
Culture-specific items
Realien such as «Abitur», «Praktikum», «Studienkolleg» or «матрёшка» are best kept with a minimal gloss only if the addressee cannot otherwise understand.
Worked example (German → Russian)
Source: „Die Bibliothek ist montags geschlossen, dafür gibt es am Samstag einen kostenlosen Workshop für Anfänger.“ Mediation for a Russian student: «По понедельникам библиотека закрыта, зато в субботу там бесплатный мастер-класс для начинающих». Reasoning: «montags» becomes the plural dative «по понедельникам»; «dafür» is a compensating contrast, so «зато», not «для этого»; «gibt es» is rendered by «там … мастер-класс»; «kostenlos» is «бесплатный». Word-for-word transfer of «dafür» would produce nonsense.
Traps that cost marks
- Translating instead of mediating: German syntax carried into Russian («это даёт мне удовольствие» for „es macht mir Spaß“).
- Dropping dates, prices or opening hours because they look like details.
- Wrong address form – «ты» in a formal letter to an institution is a register error.
- Inventing helpful extra tips that are absent from the source text.