Dann wird es Dir sicher nicht schwerfallen

1) jeweils mehrere komplette Belege (Qulle und kopiertes Zitat) für Deinen Vorschlag zu liefern, wobei Du berücksichtigen solltest, für welche "nicht-all situations" der Vorsachlag gelten soll

2) mit Belegen zu begründen, warum der derzeitige Vorschlag "idiotic" sein soll

Both the Oxford English Dictionary and the Collins Dictionary give Selbstüberwindung as willpower. I refer to both in my original post. If you follow the link, you can see that the Collins dictionary gives another option that depends on context:

'Selbstüberwindung (f) willpower
das war echte Selbstüberwindung that shows real willpower
selbst bei der größten Selbstüberwindung könnte ich das nicht tun I simply couldn't bring or force myself to do it'

How can one prove that 'self-conquest' is not 'Selbstüberwindung'? When something is not there, how can one give concrete evidence of its non-existance? Certainly, I can find it in no English dictionary. It comes across as 'idiotic' because it seems to be an overliteral translation, taking in the case of 'Überwinding' a word with a similar, but not exaclty the same, meaning.

Some bright spark is going to google the word 'self-conquest' to prove me wrong. If you do so, you'll only find it in philosophical and religious quotations; and if it is a good translation of the original ancient greek or whatever, I truly cannot say. I strongly suspect that a few poor translations of certain quotations (esp. from Teresa of Avila and Plato) are responsbile for its presence in the internet. Moreover, in some cases its use is clearly metaphorical or rhetorical:

'Self-conquest is far better than the conquest of others. Not even a god, an angel, Mara or Brahma can turn into defeat the victory of such a person who is self-subdued and ever restrained in conduct.' http://www.buddhapadipa.org/pages/dailydhamma...

In this case, the word seems to have been invented to dovetail with the word 'conquest'. Thus even if people have used the word 'self-conquest', its use is clearly very limited. To take this as evidence the quality of the translation self-control=Selbstüberwindung is dangerous, especially as there is no evidence that these are good translations of the original quotations, or that the equivalent in German would be 'Selbstüberwindung'.

I realise my tone in both this and the first post was aggressive, but as a language teacher I have found that a considerable percentage of students' lexical mistakes come from bad translations they have picked up from leo.de. I am beginning to truly believe that this website does more to harm language learning than it does to promote it.

Sorry, of course I meant the Oxford Duden, not the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sorry, a further point: my claim that 'it doesn't fit all situations' was also as much a reference to the fact that no dictionary translation will fit all situations; even in situations were there is a good dictionary translation, sometimes the meaning of the original text is rendered better by rewriting it slightly in the target language.

And, I've just noticed, why is 'self-conquest' described as an adjective in the leo entry?

And, I've just noticed, why is 'self-conquest' described as an adjective in the leo entry?

"... as a language teacher I have found that a considerable percentage of students' lexical mistakes come from bad translations they have picked up from leo.de. I am beginning to truly believe that this website does more to harm language learning than it does to promote it."

Vielleicht müsste in den Lehrplan der kritische Umgang mit Wörterbuchvorschlägen aufgenommen werden? "Picking up" genügt halt nicht, weder hier noch in irgend einem anderen Wörterbuch; man muss sich schon noch selbst vergewissern, ob die gefundene Vokabel zum eigenen Kontext passt.
Und eine gewisse Vorsicht im Umgang mit nicht-professionellen Quellen wie LEO, Wikipedia usw. gehört heute m. E. zur Medienkompetenz (noch ein Punkt für den Lehrplan).
Um diesen Preis bekommt man in solchen Quellen meist eine weit größere Zahl an Anregungen als in den realistischerweise zugänglichen Büchern, plus Forumsfunktion u. Ä.
Wie man das Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis bewertet, ist natürlich subjektiv...

All excellent points, Andreas F - I fully agree with you.

Vielleicht müsste in den Lehrplan der kritische Umgang mit Wörterbuchvorschlägen aufgenommen werden? "Picking up" genügt halt nicht, weder hier noch in irgend einem anderen Wörterbuch; man muss sich schon noch selbst vergewissern, ob die gefundene Vokabel zum eigenen Kontext passt.

True, but leo.de, in its very format, does not encourage a critical approach to the use of dictionaries: on the one side we have the German, on the other the English, and apart from the occasional indication in brackets, not always accurate, that the term belongs to a particular area of language, no context is given informing the reader about the situations in which a particular translation is appropriate. This is aggravated by the fact the leo.de seems to want to take every possible translation of a particular word, divorce it from its original context, and then offer it up as the equivalent of the German; and this is not to mention the quite clear errors on the website. Students who use leo.de look at the long list of words, the website gives them no help as to which of the many options is the best and they choose at random. At least in a 'proper' dictionary, the number of options is limited to the most common and there is a little, though I admit, not normally enough, context given to indicate the different connotations of the translations on offer.

Most of the students I taught were people who needed English for their work. They did not have the time or the resources at their desk to do the only sensible way of checking a translation from leo.de (which is to look up the word you have chosen in a monolingual English dictionary to see if it has the same definition of the concept you are looking for). The reality is that most language learners approach dicionaries uncritically and most adults have no desire to learn how to use a dictionary correctly. Add in the layout of leo.de and you have a recipe for disaster (if you allow me to slip into hyperbole...).

Puknut: you've raised some interesting points (not that I necessarily agree with all of them), but it would make more sense for you to open up a thread on them in "Comments on LEO". Indeed, I think some of them have already been discussed, but I can't easily recall the relevant threads.

To be honest, KinkyAfro, my initial complaint in the third post was only made to explain the grumpiness of my comments, and then when Andreas picked up on it, I felt I should explain myself further. I don't have enough belief in the possibility of improving leo.de to want to start a discussion of this sort.

Okay, das verstehe ich. LEO hat die beschriebenen Nachteile, das will ich nicht leugnen. Ich habe nur geantwortet, weil ich deine Wertung "schadet mehr als es nützt" nicht unwidersprochen lassen wollte.

Die Möglichkeiten, LEO zu verbessern, sind wohl in der Tat begrenzt (Ressourcen, ...). Dafür ist es gratis.

So wie im Wald: Da sind die Pilze gratis, aber du musst selbst auf die giftigen achten - und nicht über den Wald klagen.
Oder du kannst in den Laden gehen und für garantiert essbare bezahlen.
Und das müssen deine Kinder lernen, wenn sie mit dir Pilzesammeln gehen wollen.

Und anders als im Wald muss man bei Leo nur mal leise rufen und schon kommt jemand angelaufen, der einem die Pilze erklärt.

Es ist sicher richtig, dass man, wenn man nur die Tabelleneinträge betrachtet, falsch liegen kann (vielleicht sogar eher falsch als richtig), aber jeder, der es ernst meint, kann abgestuft
- die Suchfunktion benutzen
- sein Begehren in ein Forum stellen

Unfortunately, most people just want a 'quick fix' to their translation problem, and because they can find leo.de on-line, it provides it: many people drawn to using leo.de are therefore exactly the type of people who are not going to go through the trouble of cross-checking what they have found. This is why I think the site can actually be harmful.

Of course, you can ask a question, but whose answers can you trust? I have seen a number of very misleading answers to forum questions; very few of my own questions acutally produce satisfactory results. I now only use leo.de as a kind of thesaurus from German into English as I can trust myself to throw out leo.de's worst suggestions.

If you get what you pay for, what are you getting for something that is free of charge...?

Aber das inst doch das inhärente Problem bei der Benutzung des Internets. Du weißt nicht, wer etwas geschrieben hat, Du weißt nicht, ob es stimmt. Und wenn Du jemanden in einem Forum fragst, weißt Du nicht, ob die Antwort richtig ist.

Wer nur einen "quick fix" will und nicht bereit ist, die Antwort in langer Arbeit zu verifizieren ooder zu interpretieren, muss mit den Konsequenzen leben.

Ich denke, wir sollten nicht die Faulheit der Internetnutzer absegnen und statdessen den Internetangeboten die Schuld zuschieben.

Du erklärst mir gerade, dass deine Schüler zu bequem sind, auf Giftpilze zu achten, und dass man sich dabei vergiften kann. Und was alles an Giftpilzen im Wald wächst. Stimmt alles.
Sollen wir deshalb den Wald abschaffen? Oder auf die leckeren essbaren Pilze von vorneherein verzichten?

Was ich meine, ist: Anstatt über LEO zu klagen, solltest du als Lehrer es als deine Aufgabe sehen, deine Schüler für die Gefahren zu sensibilisieren. Entweder sie machen sich die Mühe, den angemessenen Umgang damit zu lernen (mit deiner Hilfe), dann können sie von LEO das profitieren, was möglich ist - oder sie lassen besser die Finger von LEO, wenn sie keine böse Überraschungen erleben wollen.
Dann haben sie am Ende mehr fürs Leben im Internet gelernt als wenn du ihnen nur immer perfekte Wörterbücher gezeigt hättest.

Well I don't (or didn't, as now I've decided to concentrate on translation and proofreading) teach children, I taught adults, so it is by no means my job to teach them how to use the internet. So stop trying to insinuate that I was a poor teacher or tell me what my job is or was. And yes, when discussing dictionaries, my final conclusion was often that they "lassen besser die Finger von LEO", or at least only use it when translating into their native language as they would have a better chance of avoiding the site's dangers. There is no such thing as a perfect dictionary, but there are plenty of examples of bad ones. If you have to cross-check every entry because of the dictionary's unreliability, the dictionary is hardly doing its job. Of course, with every translation you have to be aware that the dictionary translation may not fit the context and you many have to think of a different word, but this is something teachers should and do make clear in their lessons.

Your metaphor of a forest is, moreover, totally misleading: leo.de is not simply there by the force of nature or God, it has been created by human beings to be used by human beings. Its character and layout encourage misuse; because leo have been created by human beings, this could be changed, and therefore it seems perfectly acceptable to draw attention to this fact.

MW online:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wil...
Main Entry: will·pow·er
Pronunciation: \ˈwil-ˌpau̇(-ə)r\
Function: noun
Date: 1858
: energetic determination

DWDS:
http://www.dwds.de/?kompakt=1&qu=Selbst%C3%BC...
Selbst-
[...]
-überwindung, die Überwindung der eigenen Gefühle, bes. der Angst: es kostet ihn viel S., nicht mehr zu rauchen, die Schlucht auf schwankendem Brett zu überqueren; mit offensichtlicher S. gab er ihm die Hand; mit ungeheurer S. hielt er sich aufrecht;

Was dein ursprüngliches Anliegen betrifft:

Dein Argumente gegen "self-conquest" als Übersetzung von "Selbstüberwindung" finde ich einleuchtend. Deine Beispiele zeigen, dass damit etwas anderes gemeint ist.

"willpower" ist eher das Mittel, um den Zweck "Selbstüberwindung" (nach obiger Definition in DWDS) zu erreichen, scheint also also nicht genau das Gleiche zu sein. "Selbstüberwindung" wird aber oft im Sinne von "Kraft/Fähigkeit zur Überwindung der eigenen Gefühle" gebraucht - auch in den obigen DWDS-Beispielen! - und dann passt es.

Vorschlag unterstützt.

As I've already said in #9, this thread should really be continued elsewhere, preferably in the "Comments on LEO" section. The thread now has little to do with a new entry. Pukuk - you say you don't want to start a discussion, but even so, you seem to have pretty strong views on the subject that I feel are worthy of wider debate.

EDIT: And thanks, Andreas F. for getting back on topic :-)

Yes, thankyou Andreas for your post on willpower/Selbstüberwindung. I think you have hit the nail on the head regarding the difference between willpower and Selbstüberwindung. In my translation I used 'exerting willpower' in the context as, as you say, willpower is simply the means you use for 'Selbstüberwindung'.

(And I'm sorry for my bad-tempered posts...)

Fortsetzung der Off-Topic-Diskussion siehe hier:
Siehe auch: "willpower" - Fortsetzung der Diskussion

Could we get back to the question of whether this would be a good new entry? I tend to agree that it would; at least, I certainly agree that it's a lot better than 'self-conquest,' which is the only translation listed so far.

But there may be other even better options.

If we look at the examples from DWDS,

es kostet ihn viel S., nicht mehr zu rauchen
es kostet ihn viel S., die Schlucht auf schwankendem Brett zu überqueren
mit offensichtlicher S. gab er ihm die Hand
mit ungeheurer S. hielt er sich aufrecht

you could certainly say

It took a lot of willpower for him to stop smoking.

But it seems to me that the others might work better with something like 'effort,' e.g.,

It took a great effort (of the will) for him to stop smoking / to cross the chasm
He shook his hand with an obvious effort (of will)
With a monstrous effort (of the will) he held/kept himself straight/upright

Those all sound rather formal, though, especially with the 'will' part.

Better in everyday language would be with a verb:

He had to force himself to / He could hardly bring himself to ...
... cross the chasm / shake his hand / stay upright
He struggled to stay upright


Unfortunately I don't have my own dictionaries with me, so I can only ask Puknut and anyone else interested to copy full citations from dictionaries, and find other examples, not just to refer to them obliquely. Thanks to Andreas F. for at least getting us started.

Dito. I just deleted my original post.

Der Vorschlag willpower-Selbstueberwindung oeffnet ebenfalls Probleme in der Richtung E->D und ist genaugenommen einfach falsch. Willpower ist nicht Selbstueberwindung.

In Faellen, wo fuer die selbe Idee andere Formen genutzt werden, halte ich normalerweise den Eintrag von Beispielen besser. So wuerde ich einen Eintrag

sth. took willpower - etw. kostet Selbstüberwindung
und hm-us with an effort (of will) - mit Selbstueberwindung
forcing oneself to do sth. - etw. mit Selbstueberwindung tun

vorstellen. Moeglich waere evtl. auch "to overcome oneself" (?). Als allgmeinen Eintrag wuerde ich

"self-exertion - die Selbstueberwindung"

vorschlagen. Dies definiert zumindest den Begriff fuer die englische Seite, aber wir wuerden immer noch Beispiele benoetigen, da er sicherlich nicht sehr idiomatisch ist.