A bit of help improving the wording in French and German

[oh_meow]

Hi, I'd like some input from native French & German speakers here. It's for some product descriptions for an online shop. The site I use lets you add translations for any other languages you speak. Most of the other items in the shop are zines in English or art prints, so there's either no point having a blurb in other languages or it's simple

Comments

[rebecca2525]

My corrected version:

Retro-Briefmarken-Buttons -- Überraschungstüte!
Vier Buttons aus lackierten alten Briefmarken aus verschiedenen Ländern, mit Filzstoffrücken und Anstecknadel. Verschiedene Muster und Größen.

Bitte beachten: man bekommt *nicht* die im Bild dargestellten Briefmarken, jede Tüte ist anders.

Instead of the vague "man", I'd prefer a direct "Bitte beachten Sie, dass Sie nicht die im Bild dargestellten Briefmarken erhalten, denn jede Tüte ist anders.", or the informal version "Bitte bachte, dass du nicht [...] erhältst". This requires you to chose between formal/informal address, though.

The word Grabbelsack would cause a bit of a snigger. Apart from the fact that those small plastic bags are called Tüte, "Sack" is also a euphemism for scrotum and "grabbeln" is very close to "fummeln" = "to make out". :D Generally, "Überraschungstüte" is the word used for blind bag types of things.

I'm not quite happy with the word "retro" in the first sentence, but vintage is not a German word and not much used as a loan word either. "Buttons aus alten Briefmarken" might be a better choice, as retro is a reproduction, not the original deal. Maybe someone else has a better idea?

Generally, you can translate buttons as Anstecker, if you like, but Buttons is in use in German as well.

[oh_meow]

I used the LEO dictionary and it gave me Grabbelsack. It has some really weird choice of vocab in there sometimes. I tend to flit back and forth between there and the dict.cc one for anything idiomatic.

[rebecca2525]

Hmm, I think you could probably use Grabbelsack if you had a big bag you let people grab something from. Like when you're playing Santa on a Christmas party. It doesn't really work for a pre-packaged bag, though, and not for such a small bag.

[oh_meow]

Yeah I think that's the problem- lucky dip in British English can either mean the game where you dip your hands into a box and pick a prize, or it can mean a pre-packaged bag. It's one of those things that is quite hard to look up. I have also picked up a bad habit of referring to too many kinds of bags as Sacks/Sackerl from spending a lot of time in Austria, and it really confuses German people.

I was also really surprised to find when I was teaching young children in Austria that they don't play Pass the Parcel there at all, and none of the children or adults had ever heard of it. Is that a thing in Germany too?

[rebecca2525]

Yeah, I remember Sack (or Säckli) being much mor in use in Switzerland as well.

We once played a game at a birthday party where we had a parcel wrapped in layers of paper and tied with lots of thread. The person whose turn it was had to put on thick gloves, a hat and maybe some other garment and then try to unwrap as much of a parcel as they could before the music stopped. Then the parcel and the garments got passed to the next person. I haven't encountered this game much though, and I don't know whether it even has a common name.

[oh_meow]

Pass the Parcel is like musical chairs/Jerusalem, except with a parcel. The adults premake the parcel before hand. In the centre is a large-ish prize. It's wrapped in layers of newspaper and magazines (usually contrasting), with sweets and sometimes jokes or challenges in between each layer. The children sit in a circle and pass the parcel while music plays, when the music stops whoever is holding the parcel removes one layer of paper and wins the sweets and reads out the joke/does the challenge if they're included. The player who opens the last layer wins the big prize. The adults usually cheat a bit to make sure that the big prize is won by one of the youngest children and to make sure every child has a go. Often there's a rule for younger children too that you can't open a second layer until everyone else has had a go.

The austrian 7 year olds loved it!

[lied_ohne_worte]

"Grabbelsack" is odd, both very informal and implying you can reach in blindly and pick something. I agree with rebecca2525 that it's not really a fitting word.

[oh_meow]

I think I've figured out where they might have got that from. In American English they tend to call lucky dips grab bags. Grab bag can also be used figuratively for a badly chosen/undifferentiated selection of things like "the film was just a grab bag of too many genres" or something too though.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Actually, what about "Wundertüte" rather than "Überraschungstüte"? That's what I'd call it, but I'm not quite sure if it's dated.

[germankitty]

I'm probably dating myself, but to me a "Wundertüte" is a closed paper bag containing a spoonful of sugary puffed rice plus a cheap plastic toy. Haven't seen one, really, since the late 1960s. "Überraschungstüte" doesn't sit all that well with me, either (my mind immediately goes to "Überraschungsei"/Kinder surprise, tbh), but unfortunately I can't really think of a fitting alternative, either.

[oh_meow]

it's funny how brand names can get so associated in your head with a word- Ferrero try and try to market them as Kinder Surprise over here, but no-one ever calls them anything other than a Kinder Egg. And everyone assumes they're German.

[anicca_anicca2]

Well, "Wundertüte" does the job of describing a bag with more or less unknown or random content, so I'd think it would work. In fact I used it last year when giving away mixed bags of stuff. It's a bit tongue in cheek, but why not.

"Sack" in Germany nowadays is more used for something very big and coarse. Otherwise, it's regional / dated. My 78-year-old mother in South Germany uses "Hosensack" for "Hosentasche" but younger people wouldn't.
Austrian "Sack" or "Sackerl" corresponds to the German "Tüte, Beutel, Tasche" though.
I'd always go with the German German terms because Austrians and Swiss tend to understand and know these but it doesn't work both ways.

[anicca_anicca2]

+1