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Meaning of "Beitrag zur" as article title | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| yong321 Groupie United States yong321.freeshe Joined 5544 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes  Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 4 08 October 2012 at 12:58am | IP Logged |
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I've seen a lot of German research articles titled "Beitrag zur ...", especially "Beitrag zur Kenntnis ...", sometimes just "Zur ...". I think it's silly to translate it to "Contribution to ...". Is this phrase completely meaningless, or it has some implication? Does it just mean "The study of ...", or even "Random thoughts on ..."? Thanks.
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| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4523 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 2 of 4 08 October 2012 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
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"Beitrag" can have the meaning of "article". Thus "Beitrag zur ..." could either mean "article about ... [the stated topic]" (as the main title) or "article written for ... [the stated symposium/anthology/..." (as a subtitle).
Well, I guess the literal meaning would actually be "contribution to the field of ...", but not everything is to be taken literally ;) Edited by daegga on 08 October 2012 at 1:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| yong321 Groupie United States yong321.freeshe Joined 5544 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 4 08 October 2012 at 5:15am | IP Logged |
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That helps. I think Beitrag first means contribution, and then article, as a result of (my guess) German writers using it as the first word of the article title, in most cases not as a contributed article to a symposium or academic journal.
Anyway, probably due to this superfluous phrase, English translations vary, as in the case of (say) Karl Marx's "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie": A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr /intro.htm Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Hegel%27s_Philosoph y_of_Right Toward the Critique of Hegelian Philosophy of Right http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/600950/Toward-the- Critique-of-the-Hegelian-Philosophy-of-Right The convention of an article title beginning with "Toward ..." seems to be quite recent. It doesn't mean anything special to me either. English writers never have these useless words in the title. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| unmaad Tetraglot Newbie India Joined 6178 days ago 38 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, GermanC2, Hindi Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 4 08 October 2012 at 10:50am | IP Logged |
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Among the three translations, I would select the second one, although it omits the reference to 'zur'.
This specific usage of 'zur' is not applicable to all Germanic languages, rather it is restricted to German itself. This is just one of the numerous points where German differs from English. No exact translation is possible and the only proper way (as it seems to me) is to omit the 'zur'. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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