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Translators
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Relatives from Germany will be arriving soon and I'd like to show an interest and desire in communicating with them in their own language.
Assuming that I don't know any German, what would be the best way to communicate with someone in their native language?
Are any of you familiar with efficient, affordable (English to German) translators?
Assuming that I don't know any German, what would be the best way to communicate with someone in their native language?
Are any of you familiar with efficient, affordable (English to German) translators?
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Get a phrase book. That's about the best you can do. No one is going to expect you to learn even a modicum of German before they arrive. They'll probably want to practice their English anyway.
automatic translation programs or systems are universally terrible, bad, and wrong. If you want to communicate with someone who does not speak your language well enough to do so, you either need to speak their language or you need to find someone who speaks both.
Go with a phrase book if you really want to.
Don't try to communicate with them in long convoluted sentences. You'll just end up screwing up the grammar or pronunciation and they won't appreciate it.
What they will appreciate is if you can do little things. Learn a few greetings, farewells, and other useful phrases.
Example, when they get off the plane, say "guten morgen" if its morning (good morning), "guten tag" if its daytime (good day). I can't remember what good evening is.
As an example, my girlfriend is Belgian, so I learned a few words of Flemish to say every so often, such as "smakelijk" which means "enjoy" or "eat well". Basically its what you say at the beginning of a meal. I said it to her parents when we went out for dinner and they liked that I did that.
You don't have to hold a discussion on molecular physics in German with them to have them appreciate the effort you're going to. A few words is more than enough.
or just change your thread title of this one to be something like "Teach me a few German phrases"
The best German-English online dictionary is probably LEO; it generally also has short phrases like "Guten Appetit!" (your equivalent "Enjoy your meal."). Many individual words also have pronunciation examples.
The other major dictionary is WordReference, which heavily favors Romance languages (particularly Italian) over German, but has a decent amount of content for German.
If you really want a shortcut for full sentence translation, I suppose I'd recommend freetranslation (preferably doublechecked via a dictionary that it at least used the right word meanings). Remember that automated translators are terrible with long or convoluted sentences. They fair poorly with idiomatic expressions (they tend to get translated word-for-word), and they cannot discern intended meaning.
If you mean translator as in "I want to actually speak (a little of) the language":
You'll really want to brush up on basic pronunciation differences. W->V, Z->TS, etc. (most pocket dictionaries will have an English equivalency chart like this). Even misspeaking one word can throw a listener's concentration off (be careful with German words spelled the same as English - such as "war", "rot", or "nation"). But don't feel bad - you can always laugh at the Germans' difficulty with TH (tends to turn into an S or Z) or V/W confusion.
If you want to build sentences you'll need to know basic things about grammar (like pluralization, cases, and conjugating verbs...things that will be easier to understand if you already know another foreign language). German plurals are more complex than English's "add an (e)s". German has 4 cases, where most English speakers only recognize 2 (I/me; he/him; they/them; etc.). German has ways of avoiding the passive tense that English does not.
Simple sentence word order in German can follow the same order as in English (but usually doesn't for native speakers) so saying "The apple is red" can work just as easily as interchanging the words via a dictionary ("Der Apfel ist rot").
Don't feel bad about speaking in just the present tense. And don't worry about embarassing yourself speaking.
If you mean translator as in "I'm looking for an actual flesh-and-blood interpeter":
(minor quibble: translator = written, interpreter = spoken)
Generally you'll want to check in your phone book for nearby services. Alternatively you could try something like craigslist (or see if a friend or aquaintance from a nearby university happens to know German well enough).
Live interpretation tends to be expensive (heck, translation can be expensive). So unless you're discussing family business like wills, immigration or something more legally or technically demanding you'll likely be better off mixing your broken (or nigh non-existent - as the case may be) German with their potentially broken English. Based on what you've said, though, I wouldn't recommend getting an interpreter unless it's someone you know doing it for free (like one of your guests! :P ).
It's nice that you want to be hospitable, but you can do this with a few well chosen words. I think you're going a little overboard here. Foreign languages (especially French) can be a nightmare for a native English speaker to figure out with just a book and a few days.
Does your family (immediate in the states) speak German? And can you explain what you mean by "translator"? Like an iPhone app or something? Are you planning on holding it up around them whenever they speak in German?
truth.
My mother is occasionally hired by hospitals to do Low-German interpretation. She doesn't even speak it that well since she hasn't really used since she was a child. She still gets paid a ridiculous amount of money. Something on the order of 50-60$ an hour even if she's just sitting the room reading a book waiting for a doctor to show up.
Sorry. I was a little vague.
By "translators," I was pertaining to those little electronic, calculator-looking things.
My dad speaks some broken German and one of my relatives speaks broken English. That is the only way we're able to communicate with them.
I wanted to communicate with the other relative, because he doesn't speak a lick of English.
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.