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I am currently doing my master’s in German and need to start writing my thesis. Although I am already comfortable speaking the language, writing (especially academic papers) is not something I feel great about. Also, my thesis is a big deal. Legally speaking, could I write it in English and have it translated? It would still be my work.

Wrzlprmft
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Mila
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    Related: Writing papers in language X and translating to English vs. writing papers in English to begin with? – Wrzlprmft Jul 10 '18 at 08:16
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    Also: Are you sure that you have to write your thesis in German? In all German master’s programs I am aware of, English theses are the default. While I can think of fields where I would not expect this, e.g., Germanistics, you probably wouldn’t be asking this question if you were studying in those fields. – Wrzlprmft Jul 10 '18 at 08:24
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    In all German schools that I know (ok, only a few) writing a thesis in English is no problem – gefei Jul 10 '18 at 11:44
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    Doing Master's programme in German does not necessarily mean, you are obliged to write your thesis in German. Ask your advisor, read up the regulations ("Prüfungsordnung"). – Oleg Lobachev Jul 10 '18 at 23:17
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    Are you doing a master's degree in the study of the German language, or are you doing a master's degree at a university in Germany? It appears that most people are assuming the second case, but from the wording it appears to me that the first case is true. Which is it? – Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні Jul 11 '18 at 11:48
  • Would you be doing the translation yourself, or having someone else do it? – jamesqf Jul 11 '18 at 15:51
  • Should be an official translation service who can translate and produce official documents to certify the veracity and correctness of the translation surely? – Tom Jul 11 '18 at 21:43
  • The legal ownership of the translation is defined by the written contract between you and your translator, subject to the limits of the legal system the contract was written under. You need to ask a lawyer to draft a proper contract to ensure your rights are protected. Whether the University will let you use a translator is a question for their rules (I'd be surprised if they forbade it, but ask them). – StephenG - Help Ukraine Jul 12 '18 at 13:09

5 Answers5

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This is not a legal issue—at least not at first. If you have copyright of your work, you can at any point in time—even years from now—sign a contract with a professional who will translate the thesis into another language and provide certification of having done so. That would be perfectly legal.

The real question is if your faculty will allow you to have someone else translate your thesis so that you can submit it in German, which is largely an administrative decision that may depend on the university. If it were professionally translated, you would have to disclose that fact as part of the submission since it would technically not be entirely your work. Most theses require such an explicit statement as part of the submission.

There may be an alternative: you should consult the relevant Prüfungsordnungen (examination regulations) that cover your program. Many programs now permit theses to be submitted almost entirely in English along with a short amount of material in German (usually something like an abstract or summary plus any “pro forma” statements. It may not be necessary to hire a translator if you can do the basic translation and submit in English.

aeismail
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    That is an interesting point of view. I would assume that unless the thesis was in literature I don't quite see the difference between a person translating it and a using TeX to write it. What if there was an high enough quality translation program would that be different? – DRF Jul 10 '18 at 10:05
  • It depends on who’s doing the work. If the student does it herself that’s one thing. But if she pays someone else, that’s clearly a very different scenario. – aeismail Jul 10 '18 at 11:30
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    Yes, it's administrative -- unless the student does not properly acknowledge the efforts of the translator, in which case it becomes a much bigger deal. – Scott Seidman Jul 10 '18 at 13:27
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    @ScottSeidman I meant “administrative” in the sense of “no lawsuits or charges.” But administrative punishments can still be quite severe, as you point out. – aeismail Jul 10 '18 at 13:38
  • Can't a degree conferred without fulfilling the proper legal regulations go to the courts in Germany? Sure, it's not a crime, but it's still a matter of law, even if it is administrative law. I think you're confusing "the law" with "the criminal law". I could very well imagine a law requiring theses to be in German unless given special permission (because such a law exists in France). –  Jul 10 '18 at 16:04
  • @NajibIdrissi Anybody can file a lawsuit for anything. The question is who is going to do so, how, and why. In this particular case, the lawsuit would most likely be brought by the student against the university. But in any case the process would first be administrative before any legal proceedings took place. – aeismail Jul 10 '18 at 16:15
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    @DRF The difference is that TeX is a compiler, and translators' jobs are much fuzzier. TeX converts a known, fixed, unambiguous (if occasionally arcane and arbitrary) syntax into a known, fixed, unambiguous output. In contrast, there's no perfect translation from English to German (or any language to any other, really) so a person has to make some decisions about what to write to get across the meaning in the intended way -- which, when phrased like that, sounds a lot like writing the paper in the first place, albeit without doing the original research yourself. –  Jul 10 '18 at 17:43
  • +1 for writing in English with only the title and abstract translated to German. I've done this for my thesis in English/Portuguese, and it was accepted. Also, it will make it easier to submit papers in English based on your thesis work. But make sure it is permitted. – Chaotic Jul 10 '18 at 19:45
  • @NicHartley Seriouosly writing the paper in the first place? Ok maybe I'm tainted by Mathematics but I would assume in any hard sciences 98% of the information of the paper will be translated utterly unambiguously and is the work of the author. Sure the translator could in theory smooth out some of the formulations but that seems like a minimal problem. I doubt any translator will come up with a better proof of a lemma or a more elegant definition. – DRF Jul 10 '18 at 21:07
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    @DRF Yes, the end result is equally unambiguous and means the same thing. However, the translator is still using their skill in the area to pick the actual German words which mean what you're trying to say -- which, coincidentally, is what you do when writing a paper, except in another language. I'm not saying the two tasks are equivalent, I'm saying they're analogous, especially when compared to software applying a fixed set of relatively simple transformations to text. Translation is not that simple, as nice as it would be. Compilation, on the other hand, is. That's the difference. –  Jul 10 '18 at 21:10
  • @NicHartley I'm not disputing that there is a difference between TeX/compilation and translation. It was just supposed to be an analogy if somewhat stretched. I just don't see the problem with a translated paper/thesis. All the important stuff comes from the person who originally wrote it including layout, structure, results and any illustrations. Saying that translating is writing the paper just makes no sense to me. Add translator to acknowledgements but in most cases he will have added less authorship value than any of the people you bounced ideas off of during writing/research. – DRF Jul 10 '18 at 21:20
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    @DRF To be clear, I'm not suggesting the translator deserves authorship. Sorry if it sounded like that. I'm stating that it's worth noting the paper was translated by someone other than the author because it's significantly more complex and subjective than compilation, and it's possible that there are nuances in translation that weren't in the original paper, which might need correction. My point with the analogy is that translation is much closer to authorship than compilation -- it's not authorship, obviously, but closer than a compiler transforming text into an AST into different text. –  Jul 10 '18 at 23:59
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    @DRF An Italian proverb sums up the issue in two words; "Traduttori,traditori" (Translators, traitors!). Any translation that reads well inevitably involves some rewriting of the original - and if that rewriting improves the original author's poorly expressed argument or logic, is the result a "fair" reflection of the original author's ability or not? Potentially, not, IMO. – alephzero Jul 11 '18 at 10:33
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    @DRF I think you are right - Mathematics is probably at one end of the bar, how much of a thesis grade is pure facts and how much is formulation. - If I present a genious proof just with some words scribbled as comments on the side, it could probably still be called a good work. - On the other hand in the applied arts or social studies a thesis could very well be judged heavily by its presentation and choice of words. – Falco Jul 11 '18 at 14:35
  • @NicHartley: Certainly from a legal perspective, a professional translation would be considered both a derived work and a "work for hire", implying that the translator would have no rights in the resulting work product. On the other hand, mentioning that the work was translated would certainly seem appropriate and may also provide some damage control if certain things after translation no longer mean quite what they're supposed to. Different languages apply negative constructions differently, and it's not hard to imagine that distinctions between... – supercat Jul 11 '18 at 15:20
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    ..."Not all X are Y", "No X are Y", and other variations might get lost. In some languages, saying "All X are Y" might be taken imply that there exists at least one X that is Y, rather than merely implying that there aren't any X that aren't Y (a condition that could hold even if no X exist at all). A translator who is familiar with the field should be able to offer a "reverse translation" indicating, in the author's language how readers would understand the translation, but mistakes might still slip through. – supercat Jul 11 '18 at 15:23
  • @aei You're dismissing the scenario "op writes the thesis in native language, gets it translated, university learns of it and refuses/rescinds the degree, op sues the university". –  Jul 11 '18 at 16:28
  • @supercat You don't even need to go into grammatical constructions to find that -- 90% of words will be difficult to capture the entire nuance of, requiring more context or an explicit definition. (This doesn't apply to specific, well-defined terms in the field, of course, but that's not all the words in the paper.) –  Jul 11 '18 at 16:34
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I really need someone to create an "ask your advisor" sticker or something...

No, seriously, ask your advisor. He/she will know the rules, he might even be totally ok with an English thesis, it is not uncommon to write in English, especially if you are planning to publish it or part of it later. Furthermore, even if you would be allowed to write it in English and have it translated later by law (which I don't know for certain), you don't know if your translator properly translates all the technical terms and it would be an insult on your supervisor to force him to accept it because he has to by law, without talking with him first.

Dirk
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    After I asked "Have you asked your advisor?" about one thousand times or so, I quit because the answers are mostly either "no" or "Yes, but he said he didn't know." or no response at all. But, anyway, you're right, asking the advisor should be the first thing to do and the OP should include the answer from the advisor in the question. +1 – Nobody Jul 10 '18 at 07:55
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    +1 I teach in Germany, and I actually encourage good students who are interested in staying in academia to write their bachelor or master thesis in English. I don't force it, but I bring it up as an option and explain that if they want to stay in academia, then writing in English is going to be part of their day to day work. So why not start now... – Maarten Buis Jul 10 '18 at 09:50
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    I agree with the concept (of advisors) but in my experience there are so many who are simply not there. I believe this is why we get such questions and such "advisors" won't. – Scientist Jul 10 '18 at 11:09
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    Side note: I can recommend AutoReview comments. cc @scaaahu – Raphael Jul 11 '18 at 06:40
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When I had to do my project in French - I wrote in French directly trying to minimise my errors - as it was engineering based the vocabulary is more difficult...

But as I completed each chapter / section I got my French colleagues (also students) to read and correct / improve / comment on what I was writing.

I bribed them with food and wine :) :) But we also had an exchange where I would look at the the English they had to write and help them with that...

We helped each other...

Solar Mike
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In my experience (fluent in Spanish, German and English) is that it is much harder to translate than to write in the target language in the first place. There are too many colloquialisms, figures of speech, exact technical phrasings that are next to impossible to translate decently (if at all). And the translator will have to be familiar with both languages (hard to get) and very familiar with the subject (that presumably leaves anybody but yourself and perhaps a handful others straight out).

I'd try first to write in English (fun fact: was strictly forbidden here, but often done anyway as many theses were published as papers elsewhere, or were written as part of international collaborations; local language is Spanish!). You can do your presentation in English or German at the end. Ask your advisor.

Second choice, and like others tell you, write in German, check with available tools (spelling, ...). Ask your colleagues/co-students to read chapters (both for language and contents). Bribe them by throwing a party for helpers if need be, make sure to credit their help.

Only as a very last resort would I reach out to a translation service.

vonbrand
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First of all you need to weigh in pros and cons of having the final version of your thesis in German vs in English. Think of your future career plans in Germany or elsewhere, language the defense committee is comfortable with, etc.

If you decide to write it in English and translate into German, do the following:

  1. Make sure the thesis is complete, nice, and shiny in English

  2. Translate it roughly by yourself into German with the help of fine free tools such as Google Translate and text editor spell checker, etc. Read it and see if you can correct some translation by yourself.

  3. Buy a translation service to edit and proofread your translation. You will supply the translators with your German version and well as the English version.

That way everything is perfectly legal, ethical, moral, transparent, and makes total sense on your side. Now, whether the translators will edit your German translation or completely discard it and translate it on their own isn't really of your concern, in fact it is their own business.

Arthur Tarasov
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  • I'd be shocked if google translate would produce anything even remotely in the ballpark of being acceptable for a submission. Translate is a decent aide when trying to understand some text in a foreign language, it's not at all suited for authorship in a foreign language you're so unfamiliar with that you'd have to rely on a translator in the first place. – Cubic Jul 12 '18 at 13:28