Learn a few subtleties, cultural aspects, and histories of the language that should be taken into account when translating German. All Tasks, a translation company specialized in large-scale technical translations, technical standards, technical manuals and technical documentations, maintains a skilled and qualified staff to meet major demands for this language, which had its first grammatical revision in 1998 and in such little time has gained much significance.

German had its linguistic standards revised for the first time in 1998 and is hence considered one of the latest among the 6900 world languages and dialects. Currently, it is the mother tongue of more than 100 million people, considered the one most spoken in Europe. In addition, other millions of people speak German as a foreign language. Why has it become so influent on the global stage, despite being so recent?

Developing knowledge in a wide range of fields, such as sciences, literature, philosophy, and music, but focusing efforts mainly towards a broad scope of technologies that besets almost everything the global market is interested in producing and consuming, Germany today has one of the strongest economies worldwide, based on a competent banking system and a strong and very respected industry due to their proud reliability achieved.

The philosophy of Marx, Engels, Kant, Nietzsche and Wilhelm, for instance, was written in German, swaying much of the world’s ideas within the broad spectrum of social sciences and in ways to rethink politics and administration. Great authors such as Goethe and Schiller, the Brothers Grimm, Thomas Mann, Berthold Brecht, Hesse, Böll and Günter Grass still today take part in building thoughts of people from many cultures, and scientists Albert Einstein, Fahrenheit and Max Planck had significant contribution to underpin the motivation of restless researchers in any country.

Following the same path, the famous German Technical Standards, DIN, developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung, which determined best practices with aim to define methods and processes and ensure the safety and quality in various industrial and service sectors, because of the huge volume of texts already developed, is also emblematic for tallying the role of German language within the universe of global literature.

The German standardization institute relies on 26 thousand experts that apply their technical knowledge in the formulation of standardization proposals. The importance and efficiency of the DIN standards have resulted in economic gain within the corporate and public scope in Germany, estimated at 16 billion euros annually. Standardization is unquestionably an important strategic tool for competitiveness, promoting international trade and leveraging economic growth. After so many relevant citations, we may conclude a question mark wouldn’t be the best choice for this article’s title, but rather an exclamation, given how truly admirable it is that in so little time so much has been written in such a recent language. Why? The explanation may reside in the fact that it is just another feat of a people who built their performance profile with discipline, perfectionism and commitment to their goals, leaving examples along the way to be followed and histories to be copied.

Now the actual question is: why is it considered an extremely novel language? The answer lies in its historical background. At the age of the Holy Roman German Empire , what is now Germany was comprised by small states, hence in each region there were different dialects unable to be understood by their neighbors. In 1521, Martin Luther carried out the first translation of the bible, which resulted in language standardization, seeing as the dialect presented in the religious book took on official status. The model proposed by the theologian originated classic German, Hochdeutsch, spoken by all and used in mainstream media.

The first grammatical and orthographic rules were only registered in 1860, when an official standard for German was declared. The following evolution of the language consisted in the revision of the linguistic standards and only took place in 1998. Brazil still lacks people who master the German language in general, and such shortage is even greater when technical translators are sought for that language, a fact that requires additional scrutiny while hiring translation companies for such purpose.