Forum .LRN Q&A: german translation: you or you?

Should the german translation use the formal "Sie" or the informal "Du"?

I was thinking about that when stumbling over this sentence during translation:

"You can not add any portlets to this page because they are all in use."

I think in this case a translation that avoids directly addressing the user would sound most natural: "Dieser Seite koennen keine weiteren Portlets hinzugefuegt werden weil sie alle in Verwendung sind.".

In cases where it can't or shouldn't be avoided I strongly vote for the informal "Du" and hope that everybody agrees.

Firsthand I vote for the formal "Sie" (as well as avoiding directly addressing the user where possible). We will have a lot of non-students using this system in Heidelberg (professors, staff, administration, etc.) and I think that would prevent problems. I would like to hear what others think about this. I would also be interested to know what MS (and other translated) Software uses (I am in Texas at the moment and do not have access to a German MS software to check).

I have discussed this with my local team in Heidelberg and there is a unanimous vote AGAINST using the informal "Du"

Here are two replies:

--------from a professor in our group--------
zwei antworten

a) formal sollte man "you" mit "sie" uebersetzen

b) besser uebersetzt man nicht "woertlich", sondern sinngemaess
  - da kann man auch "sie/du" vermeiden und wie in diesem satz auf "man" ausweichen.
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--------from a student in our group---------
Bin eher fuer "Sie". Nicht nur wegen der Professoren 😉 - immerhin gibts auch noch manche Studenten, die man mit Sie anreden kann, oder? Außerdem will ich auch nicht von jedem Dozenten geduzt werden... (hey - bloß nicht zu ernst nehmen... aber ehrlich: mit "Sie" wird die Uebersetzung auch fuer andere Faelle einfacher. Und weshalb unnoetig verkomplizieren...)
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Can we go with "Sie" first Tilmann? We can add an informal "Du" translation later if needed.

Carl

P.S. Talli sumtimes yer a galoot, a Texanese translayshun is uh whole nuther thing, yet I hav'ta fess up that I no some that'll take to yer i-deer like a gopher to soft dirt. Problem is yer "trash" translayshun is  whomperjawed, so I'd reckon we need uh "OpenACS Community Spittoon" package b'fore we could start (uh Texan translayshun of anything without use'n the word "spittoon" in it ain't worth much). Awlright? 😉

I just looked at a few web pages in german and realized that most of them use the formal "Sie" and it doesn't look that strange at all. They don't use the direct addressing in most cases too, so I agree that that's the way to go.

Just take care that "Sie" is always written with uppercase first letter (obviously).

Another topic: what about respecting both the female and the male form? Especially in university settings i could imagine writing something like "Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter" is asking for trouble ...

OK, I vote for "Sie".

I think it is better to use the formal "Sie" since it is simply more polite. "Du" is for more informal use. Another reason might be that the Götz Zitat is more difficult to use when you use the formal "Sie" 😊