I am and/or my child is [in good health]
| 19:27 Jun 12, 2019 |
| English to German translations [PRO] Law/Patents - Certificates, Diplomas, Licenses, CVs / Verzichtserklärung | |||||||
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| 3 +1 | Ich bin und/oder mein Kind ist [gesund / bei guter Gesundheit] |
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| Discussion entries: 8 | |
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Answers
26 days confidence: 
peer agreement (net): +1
peer agreement (net): +1Ich bin und/oder mein Kind ist [gesund / bei guter Gesundheit] Explanation: This is the best of the options considered, and also matches the source text. It is an agglomeration of two sentences, with ellipsis¹, just as in English: "I am healthy." ∪ "My child is healthy." = "I am healthy and/or my child is healthy." "Ich bin gesund." ∪ "Mein Kind ist gesund." = "Ich bin gesund und/oder mein Kind ist gesund." (Actually, the above is also a valid translation, but becomes more wordy and departs more from the source text.) The following constructions appear invalid to me "Ich und/oder mein Kind bin gesund." — subject–verb mismatch (only works with "ich") "Ich und/oder mein Kind ist gesund." — subject–verb mismatch (only works with "Kind") "Ich und/oder mein Kind sind gesund." — subject–verb mismatch (only works with "und") "Ich und/oder mein Kind sind/ist gesund." — subject–verb mismatch (doesn't work with "ich") "Ich und/oder mein Kind ist/sind gesund." — subject–verb mismatch (doesn't work with "ich") As some have observed in the discussion, most published 'rules' apply to the conjunction "und" (or "and") alone, not to the 'choice' of "und/oder" (or "and/or") From the foregoing analysis the following appears valid, but horribly difficult to parse: "Ich und/oder mein Kind sind/bin/ist gesund." For computer programmers that is fractionally easier to parse with unconventional punctuation: "Ich und|oder mein Kind sind|bin/ist gesund." or "Ich und/oder mein Kind sind/bin|ist gesund." but I wouldn't recommend it. The same principle should hold for the other examples: "I have understood." ∪ "My child has understood." = "I have and/or my child has understood." "Ich habe verstanden." ∪ "Mein Kind hat verstanden." = "Ich habe und/oder mein Kind hat verstanden." But unfortunately the source text doesn't meet this expectation, and instead uses "I and/or my child have understood." That would correspond to "Ich und/oder mein Kind haben verstanden", which I suppose most here would not be keen on. Despite the grammatical problems with that second construction in the source text, it's not an unknown formulation in English: "I and/or my child have" — 49 hits https://www.bing.com/search?q=+"I and/or my child has" "I and/or my child has" — 7 hits https://www.bing.com/search?q=+"I and/or my child has" (Note that the first option covers both first-person singular and first-person plural.) That's apparently not true in German: +"Ich und/oder mein Kind habe" — 0 hits https://www.bing.com/search?q=+"Ich und/oder mein Kind ... +"Ich und/oder mein Kind hat" — 0 hits https://www.bing.com/search?q=+"Ich und/oder mein Kind ... +"Ich und/oder mein Kind haben" — 1 hit https://www.bing.com/search?q=+"Ich und/oder mein Kind ... By the way, that also means that variants such as "Ich und/oder mein Kind haben/habe/hat verstanden" were not found either. So that again favours selection of "Ich habe und/oder mein Kind hat verstanden," rather than "Ich und/oder mein Kind haben verstanden". To reiterate, I recommend the concept of breaking down each of the English agglomerated 'alternative' sentences into two separate simple sentences, translating that into German, and then agglomerating them. "... ich [1st person verb] X Y Z." ∪ "... mein Kind [2nd person verb] X Y Z." = "... ich [1st person verb] und/oder mein Kind [2nd person verb] X Y Z." in which X Y Z is identical in all three instances. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis_(linguistics) & https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse_(Linguistik) |
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