Making a copy – a notion that takes years to understand in German businesses.

When I first came to Germany half a lifetime ago, one of the first dictionaries I found in the family library where I lived was Duden’s Synonym-Wörterbuch. I remember sitting on the sofa in my room reading it. Pretty obvious I have always been a language nerd, I know….

Years later once I had finished university, spent several years working as a translator and taken my exams as a sworn translator for the courts in Germany, I still felt I was being haunted by understanding the difference between the German words Abdruck, Ablichtung, Ausdruck, Ausfertigung, Auszug, Durchschrift, Abschrift, Exemplar, and there are so many more, which simply mean – copy.

A cultural insight into a preference in Germany to have specific terms which contrasts to the British more generic terms. I wonder how many words the standard German language has compared to the English language?

So I guess if you don’t speak German and English, you may question what all this talk about copies means – ich verstehe nur Bahnhof.

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