0

I'm looking for opinions from people who are bilingual and have actually done this themselves. (Not sure what to tag this under?)

So I've been learning German for a few years in school and I even had a foreign exchange student. She was very fluent in English (me less so in German) but the one thing that we definitely couldn't connect on was math. We both understood the same concepts, but we used different symbols and names for everything. It was interesting to see how she had been taught the same ideas differently and how she had a different perspective on certain topics.

Now I know the basics (numbers, basic operators, etc), but I've been looking into learning heavier mathematical German. Considering many of the names that I can think of probably wrote in German--ie Riemann, Gauss, Hilbert, Goldbach, Leibniz, Klein, Cantor, (I think even Euler for some of his work, even though he was Swiss), it's likely subtleties got lost in translation. I think it could be interesting to read what Leibniz originally wrote about calculus, for example.

So my question is: as I get into higher math, is it worth it to learn enough German to read the papers in their original languages? What are some differences, if any, in the translations?

regionalsky
  • 183
  • 1
    This is mathematical exposition; any relevant subtleties lost are likely to be simple steps omitted for the sake of brevity. If a translation omits important, non-obvious steps in proofs, then it is not only a bad translation, but a bad paper unfit for publication. – user780256 Apr 29 '20 at 05:02
  • That said, if you're not reading for study but for pleasure, I can see the value of skipping past the translation to the original publication. – user780256 Apr 29 '20 at 05:02
  • @user780256 yeah I'm mostly considering reading the original texts more for interest and less for learning; per my example, with Leibiz, I've been studying calculus for years but is it different enough to be interesting in German? By different I don't mean fundamentally flawed, I more mean the subtle phrases and wordings that don't translate directly to English. – regionalsky Apr 29 '20 at 05:08
  • @regionalsky: Leibniz first writing on calculus was in Latin. Much of Gauss’s writing was in Latin, and some was in French. At least two of Goldbach’s works were in Latin, and his famous letter to Euler was in German and Latin, the latter being used for the conjecture. – Brian M. Scott Apr 29 '20 at 05:14

0 Answers0