Talk:Fuchs

German, Etymology 1, Noun, 2 : flawed translation

The german example sentence is indeed something you can commonly hear, but the translation strikes me as flawed/not translating the meaning/having a meaning completely unrelated to the original, german sentence.

"Er ist ein ganz schöner Fuchs." is translated into "He is a really handsome fox.", likening "schön" to the visuals of something and hence translating it into "handsome". In fact, though, this kind of "schön" would roughly have a meaning of "to some extend" or "to a great extend", very similar as in english you can say "that's pretty much all about it" with the meaning of "that is probably/roughly/the majority of all there is in regards to this".

So, a more accurate translation might be something like "He is really pretty much a fox." for a somewhat clunky word by word translation: "Er ist / He is", shoving the "ein / a" to another placing in the english sentence, where it goes with "fox", plus "ganz / really" (actually exactly: "totally, wholly") plus "schöner / pretty" plus "much" as in this use of "pretty", a "much" seems to follow by default, plus "ein ... Fuchs / a fox".

The "much" which is by default used in combination with "pretty" in this kind of usage is actually mirrored in german where "ganz" (wholly, completely) almost always goes with that specific usage of "schön" (pretty), and the meanings of "much" and "ganz" in their own rights also are very equal. So even in the word-by-word translation I'd tend to say this instead: "He is pretty much a fox." for it's a translation that could appear as-is in an english text, as far as I can tell.

As a proper translation of the meaning "He is really pretty cunning." would make sense, but it omits the usage of the word "fox", so I'm not sure if that's what would be done for an article in wiktionary.

Now, I just joined -actually solely for this comment- and don't dare making an edit just yet, let alone an undiscussed one! It's rather possible I not know everything in the world, after all, and maybe there is a version of the german sentence that actually would translate like the english sentence used in the article, and I just not came across it yet.

Hence I decided to open a discussion, instead of diving in here with a headstart and meddle with editing mere minutes after I signed up. I hope that's understandable. Thank you for your attention and interest in the matter!

~Mandalay MandalayMorisson (talk) 16:56, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi and welcome! You're right, that translation is quite bad. Many translation templates take a |lit= (=literal) parameter, so you could specify your version as follows:

{{ux|de|Er ist ein ganz schöner '''Fuchs'''.|He is really pretty cunning.|lit=He is really pretty much a '''fox'''.}}

Er ist ein ganz schöner Fuchs.

He is really pretty cunning.

(literally, “He is really pretty much a fox.”)

Jberkel 17:37, 25 June 2023 (UTC)