Thread: Proofreading is needed

Hi,

I'm struggling with german and as an exercise I do german to english translations from time to time. I'll ask about the quality of the translation somewhere else, but here I would like to ask you to correct my english.

If anybody is interested the original of the article is here:
http://www.zeit.de/2004/11/Stimmts_21_Gramm

And here is my translation:

Is it true?

Weight of soul

In one of the movies they say: „We all lose 21 grams of weight at the very moment we die“. Is this scientific truth? Hansj

Looks good! I made several changes below. You need the definite article "the" wherever I put it in bold. Everything else is just a suggestion, not an actual correction.


The Weight of the Soul

In a movie someone says: "We all lose 21 grams of weight at the very moment we die." Is this scientifically accurate? Hansj

Begemot, thank you very much, the corrections make sense to me. I have one more question and several comments. The question is: is it absolutely necessary to put the's in the title? I always belived, that in the titles they can be easily omited, and I have an impression, that I actualy saw many such titles, I just can't remeber them now.

As for the rest of the text:
"In one of the movies they say" - yes, i tried several sentences here, but was not sure which choise would sound more natural. If I were to tell this to a mate I would say: "You know, I saw a movie yesterday, and a chracter in the move said", but it's somewhat inapropriate in an article, and what is more important there was not anything like this in the original text. I didn't choose the option you suggested because I wasn't sure that "sombody" would sound right, because it adds a litle bit of "personality" in the sentence that originaly was impersonal.

"hence" - I read a lot of techical documentation, that's where this word came from. therefore sounds much better.

"at the instant of death" - I've always felt something awkward about this in the sentence. I even tried to change it to "at the moment of death", by all means, your suggestion is better.

"who were at the late stage of a terminal disease" is a direct tranlsation from german. Your version is more concise. the same goes for "measured their weight" and "to take a photograph"

"too inaccurate" gave me a bad feeling too. I felt, that measurments can be accurate or inaccurate, and "too inacurate" didn't sound right, but I was not sure.

And I don't have big enough vocabulary to find a word better then freak. I would choose a better one if I knew one.

All in all, thank you very much for your help, I learned a lot from you.

In a stylized title, you might be able to leave out the first "the", i.e, Weight of the Soul, but the second one I think is absolutely necessary. Soul, without "the", would sound like you're talking about soul music, or that elusive quality known as "soul", which is quite different from "a soul" or "the soul".

I agree translating "es heisst in einem Film" is tricky. Keeping the impersonal construction leads to some awkward English sentences, but I understand why you might feel it necessary.