Stephanie Shellabear - False Friends in Business English

When it comes to doing business, you always need to be prepared. If you are doing business in English, but your mother tongue is German, then you need to be prepared for the traps that the English language holds for you.

The following chapter will provide you with information about:

• the different kinds of false friends (page 6),

• the effect on your business contacts of language errors (page 8),

• typical mistakes in CVs, applications and interviews (page 9).

Take the German word Mappe. Map exists in English but, while you are talking about something to put papers in, your English-speaking business contact thinks you mean a large piece of paper with roads and towns on it (Landkarte). The correct English word for Mappe- in this particular case is folder. Other examples are Gift/gift, Kredit/credit, Fabrik/ fabric. You will find a list of the more frequently heard false friends in the latter half of this book.

These are words that generally mean the same, but it depends on the context. Here is a standard example: extra and Extra- If you say in German Ich habe es extra so hingestellt, damit du es sofort siehst, you would need to say in English I put it there deliberately so that you would see it. If you are in a restaurant, though, and order eine Extra-Portion Gemse you can say in English an extra portion of vegetables. There is one verb which deserves special mention here, because it is probably the most frequently made mistake, namely: machen/make. We make mistakes, we make coffee, we make a fuss, but we do sports, we do courses and we do the accounts.

You probably already know not to describe an Unternehmer as an undertaker, unless of course that particular entrepreneur or business owner really is an undertaker ( Leichenbestatter ). Similarly, it is widely known that a Hochschule is not the same thing as a high school.

These are English words that have found their way into everyday German usage but mean something completely different to the original English word, such as Handy, Peeling and Body . Others, such as Wellness and Neckholder , do not even exist in English; and some can shock your audience or perhaps make them laugh although you meant to be serious: take public viewing , for instance, which until now meant solely ffentliche Aufbahrung (einer Leiche) ! It is better to talk about a live transmission on a big screen. Who knows, perhaps these terms will gradually find their way into everyday English.

There is a strange phenomenon which occurs with just a few German words. They are often translated by German speakers into words that do not exist in English. One false friend of this type is reservieren , which many express as reservate. Reservate does not exist, but it is said automatically by many people due to what they have learnt so far of the English language.

Take the German word isoliert : if the context is a location that is far away from anywhere else, then the translation is indeed isolated. However, this is a false friend if we are talking about buildings and stopping the heat escaping from them; in this context you need to speak of insulation.