Talk:Hochschule

Literally translation misleading?

Me and @Mephistolus: disagree about adding a translation about european highschools (not the same as american "high schools"). He believes it might be misleading and his last argument was:

It is misleading because the literal translation is not connected to the actual meaning in any way.

I beg to differ. The annotation, that basically provides a split translation, doesn't mislead apparently. The listed schools can be all translated into "highschool" or "higher school", which would underline the connection and the similar way of naming schools. The literal translation is connected to the meaning in so far, as the schoollayers are "elementary"-schools (the base), "middle"-schools (the centre) and "high"-schools (the top). The article Mittelschule (middleschool) contains even the literal translation, so why not this layer? Note also, that the article says "institutions of higher education" making the term "highschool" even more appropriate. Opinions from others are wished. --Anton Sachs (talk) 13:06, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Indeed I believe that a literal translation of Hochschule is misleading. A Hochschule corresponds to a university (in the English sense of the word, that is a degree awarding higher education institution, but not in the sense of the German term Universität). The literal translation of Hochschule is "high school", which is commonly understood as a type of secondary school, not a type of university. Thus we must not use this translation as it is inherently inappropriate and actively harms understanding.

The term Mittelschule, which indeed refers to secondary schools, does not have this problem as the literal translation is perfectly correct and supports understanding there. The translation "higher school" is not a literal translation and still misleading because it is unclear (higher than what type of school exactly?).

Regarding the annotation in the article, I think it provides additional information that might interest the reader. It is not misleading because it actively clears up a potential source of confusion. The article works fine without it though, so I wouldn't oppose removing it.

Literal translations certainly have their place, but we should avoid misleading readers here, especially given that the definition in the article is perfectly understandable without it. Mephistolus (talk) 23:01, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't understand what exactly is misleading. Anton's wording includes "lit.Tooltip literal translation 'highschool' " in the parenthetical, the version by Mephistolus doesn't. Both have the same explanatory note. In either version, it is clear that Hochschule is not equivalent to 'highschool', so Mephistolus's claim seems overblown. However, M's version is shorter, but A's version has all the relevant EN/DE information together and, more importantly, has the footnotnote in the right place. It's a lame dispute. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:08, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

So your issue is just, that it might be not clearly enough marked as a literal translation, which itself is always an addition and helps to understand. I mentioned "Higher school" only for Высшее учебное заведение from the article, since Высшее is the comparative-form and means higher and not high, to underline my statement, that all those schools are named something with high(er). Your question about to what it is higher is valid and I can't answer for certainty. Apart from this we don't seem to disagree.

Basically others will decide, if it is misleading and if yes, how it can be phrased, so it isn't. --Anton Sachs (talk) 14:31, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

So, any other opinions? --Anton Sachs (talk) 13:58, 19 May 2019 (UTC)