... will see it as an incentive that ... will now be available ...

I might ay here

Sorry, dude, Strawberry was spot on, while yours is not correct.
I keep noticing that you are losing track of the finer points of the German language.

"Spot on" is not quite true.

There is a little time-mix-up in the translation: In your English version it sounds as if the new thing is in place already. Also some other errors (should be "in a short time", not "for"). Here is my shot:


"We hope that many colleagues will see it as an incentive, if the titles catalogued for Bibliography ABC are freely available to the public in a short time."

(Even better: "(...)are available to the public quickly and for free.")

Sorry, "if the titles ..." is dead wrong. The titles are on the market, which is expressed by "nun, dass....".

to me, "now that" is closer in meaning to "nun da": Now that he has a dog, he exercises more frequently - Nun, da er einen Hund hat, ...

"wenn nun" has a different meaning, IMO, and that meaning can depend on the context. According to http://www.dict.cc/german-english/Und+wenn+nu... it means "so what if?" Obviously that doesn't fit here. "...wenn nun die ... Titel ... kostenlos zur Verfügung stehen" would mean to me something like "... once the titles ... will be available ..."

I suppose what confused me with the OP is the "Ansporn" because there is no connection to anything in the sentence that "Ansporn" could refer to. An "Ansporn/incentive" for what? Maybe the preceding sentence is needed here for clarification. At any rate, I don't think that Strawberry's version is "spot on."

Edit: where does it say "nun, dass" in the OP, Werner?

Since there is no sign of a "nun dass" I vehemently stick to "if".

I understand that the quick availablity of these titles should motivate the co-workers in some way. That's the incentive.

I don't think it's a question of "if." It seems like a done deal that's about to happen.

Could Ansporn here mean something more along the lines of..

"Now that these titles collected for Bibliography ABC are going to become available soon, we hope that our colleagues will seize the opportunity to do some research, learn something new, etc..."
What confuses me is that the ...wenn nun... makes it sound like the titles are going to be made available to the public, but Strawberry writes in the summary of the context that the titles have already been made public.

Anyways, if they are already available, I'd say:
"We hope that many colleagues will see it as an opportunity, now that the titles collected for Bibliography ABC have been made available to the public after only a short time."

If they're going to be made available, I'd say:
"We hope that many colleagues will see it as an opportunity, when the titles collected for Bibliography ABC are (soon) made available to the public."

... empfinden werden, wenn nun ... nach ganz kurzer Zeit ... zur Verfügung stehen.

leads me to believe, as I said, that it hasn't happened yet but is about to happen, possibly even concurrently.

On the other hand, you might be better off asking Werner who seems to have a much better grip on the finer points of the German language than I do.

I don't disagree with you, dude. Based on the German I would draw the same conclusions. But Strawberry knows the rest of the text and writes:

The context is that a bibliography on a particular topic was recently published online and... 

So based on that information, it's already happened.

I agree, but the sentence itself leads me to believe otherwise. Why else would the "empfinden" of the "Ansporn" be put in the future tense by the speaker? Why did s/he not say "Wir hoffen, dass viele Mitarbeiter es als Ansporn empfinden" if it's happened already?

I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make to me. Or is this not directed at me?
I've only offered my interpretation on the sentence (primarily RE: Ansporn), and then offered two ideas based on a) the past tense as reported to us by Strawberry and b) my interpretation of the sequence of events, which is congruent with yours...

no point really; forget I said anything. :-)

FWIW, I think Werner is wrong in assessing that Strawberry's translation was spot on and dude's was incorrect.

If I understand the OP correctly, a bibliography, i.e. a list of titles, was recently published online. The text continues

Wir hoffen, dass viele Mitarbeiter es als Ansporn empfinden werden, wenn nun die für Bibliography ABC erfassten Titel schon nach ganz kurzer Zeit der Öffentlichkeit kostenlos zur Verfügung stehen.

To me, this sounds as if the books/articles/other documents whose titles are listed in the bibliography are to be made available in full. Hence, I'd translate it as

We hope that many colleagues/collaborators will see it as an incentive that the titles catalogued for/listed in Bibliography ABC are now made available free of charge to the public after a short time. (in other words, the public doesn't have to wait long before they can access the full text versions, and they don't have to pay for them)

Hi Everyone, I'll be the first to admit that my translation was problematic, hence my plea for help! :) The "incentive" is what Lara Chu and Zachaban were getting at--the fact that since info is available quickly online, this should spur the colleagues into action to do more research, learn new things. (When the bibs were printed in book form, information spread comparatively slowly and the collaborators didn't feel as much time pressure.)

I should have mentioned that the bib continues to grow, hence the feeling you all sensed that this was happening now and in the future. Despite my oversight, Lara Chu's 1st suggestion and Dragon's grasped the sense I was looking for, and I ended up combining them. Thanks to all!

I think part of the problem might have been that "Titel" in German can be used for both the title (e.g. of a book or magazine) and for the book itself.