Need German Translation for....?

sequoiaranger · October 11, 2009, 08:55:35 AM

I am hoping someone who knows German can help me out.

I am looking for an appropriate word in German that begins with the letter "U". Not a SPECIFIC word, mind you, but I need a "U" for an acronym for an upcoming whif. The word I need should either be something like the English word "ultimate" (would "uber" do??), or "very long" (as in Range), or "modified".

I have a Bf-109 that I will make a super-long-range fighter ("R" for Reichweite--Range) with "H" wings and carrier-capable ("T" for Traeger--carrier). So far I have Bf-109 H T R, and if I had a legitimate "U" in there after the H, I would have the acronym I want---"HURT"

Any help for candidate words beginning with the letter "U" would be appreciated.

PS-- just found "Umrust-Bausatz", which means "factory conversion set". I know that several Me-262's had a "U" in their complete designations---is this what the "U" stood for? The Me-262 designations were at the end of a string of numbers and separated by a slash, i.e., "Me-262 A-1a/U3" or something. I would prefer something that could be rationally included in the "main" designation.

Please confirm or deny the above?

B777LR · October 11, 2009, 09:12:27 AM

I suppose Umrust means something along the likes of refit, and bausatz is model kit or building kit. Fabrik = factory. Modifizieren = modify.

martinbayer · October 11, 2009, 10:07:54 AM

According to http://en.allexperts.com/e/r/rl/rlm_aircraft_designation_system.htm, special conversions of basic types were given the suffix /U for "Umbausatz", meaning "conversion kit", followed by a number, when carried out by the manufacturer as opposed to in the field. "Uber" would really have to be spelled "Über" or "Ueber", if the two dots are not readily available, since it's an Umlaut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umlaut_(diacritic), but I'd recommend to stay away from it, since the context it's usually quoted in in English/American culture is really more of a vastly overused cliche. For your concept, you could however postulate that U stands for Ultra as in Ultra-Reichweite (ultra long range).

Hope this helps,

Martin

sequoiaranger · October 11, 2009, 10:23:04 AM

>For your concept, you could however postulate that U stands for Ultra as in Ultra-Reichweite (ultra long range).<

Thank you, Martin. I was not sure that "ultra" was a word used in the German language, but if it is, then it is the most appropriate word.

PS--Yes, I knew that "uber" had an umlaut, and would have used it in any narrative of my aircraft had I decided to use that word. I just got lazy for the purpose of the narrative here, and didn't search for the ü in the "character map" to post it here as I should have. Sorry.

PPS--your use of "cliche" in your post could have used the proper diacritical mark, as in "cliché".

martinbayer · October 11, 2009, 11:21:46 AM

Touché on the cliché - I was too lazy to search around for an electronic representation of the proper accent aigu as well

.

Concerning the über http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cber, with proper spelling your acronym would have turned into HÜRT, which would probably have somewhat defeated your intent

.

Ultra has pretty much the exact same meaning of "beyond" or "extreme" in German, like in Ultrakurzwelle (ultra short wave), Ultraleichtflugzeug (ultralight airplane) or Ultraviolett.

Martin

martinbayer · October 11, 2009, 12:54:17 PM

Theoretically both are possible, although ultralange (a classical case of a German compound word) in combination with Reichweite is a bit of overkill and sounds slightly awkward (at least to me). I did a quick popularity test with Google and got 1 hit for ultralange Reichweite vs. 16 hits for Ultra Reichweite und 4 hits for the compound spelling Ultrareichweite.

Martin

sequoiaranger · October 11, 2009, 12:58:15 PM

Sounds like we have a winner!! Thanks to all.

martinbayer · October 11, 2009, 02:14:57 PM

One quick addition - while I still think ultralange would be more correct, I did a check for ultra lange Reichweite and got 2 hits on Google. Leaving 'lange' out of the term is however still the notably more prevalent formulation, although clearly none of the expressions is anywhere near being one of the more common German phrases

. But Ultra Reichweite is reasonably plausible for the intended usage.

Martin

ChernayaAkula · October 11, 2009, 08:34:24 PM

My vote would be for "ultralange Reichweite". Sounds awkward, but, well, that's German for you.

And a lot of the acronyms do sound rather awkward. And we seem to love these long compound words.

What about "überlange Reichweite"? In an acronym you could get away with using a U instead of an Ü, typing "ueberlange". As Martin said, "über" is a bit of a cliché, but in this context it might just be correct. There are "überschwere Maschinengewehre", meaning (very) heavy machine guns (M2 HB or DShK - as in "not man-portable" (at least not a single guy)) or "überschwere Panzer", meaning very heavy tanks (such as the Maus or the Soviet T-35). So in this case, a "Jäger mit überlanger Reichweite" would not just be a long-range fighter, but one where special emphasis is put on the fact that is has such great endurance or that it was developed with this in mind.

nev · October 11, 2009, 10:45:32 PM

Quote from: ChernayaAkula on October 11, 2009, 08:34:24 PM
My vote would be for "ultralange Reichweite". Sounds awkward, but, well, that's German for you. And a lot of the acronyms do sound rather awkward. And we seem to love these long compound words.

Its been 23 years, and I still remember strassenbahnhaltestelle from my GCSE German. Ususally prefixed by "Wie komme ich um besten zum...?"

And the answer was always "du gehts here links und den gerarderaus"

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Need German Translation for....?

B777LR