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English to German translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Idioms / Maxims / Sayings
English term or phrase:There is nothing new under the sun.
I am currently looking through a translation test I took two years ago and am trying to understand the mistakes I made. The saying "there is nothing new under the sun" occurred in a text about alcohol abuse in UK:
Has not alcohol always been with us and taken in intermittent binges to dull the pain of harsh reality? Was not alcohol misuse a major concern as far back as records go?
The answer to these questions is of course yes, and there is nothing new under the sun. But there seem to be some real changes in the last decade that are putting particular strains on both the NHS and the police service.
I had simply translated the respective sentence with "Die Antwort auf all diese Fragen lautet natürlich ja und stellt nichts neues dar." This was obviously not enough.
Thanks for your suggestions!
Explanation: ...als viel zu später Vorschlag – und angesichts der überwältigenden, mir in diesem Satzkontext unverständlichen Zustimmung zu "Es gibt nichts Neues unter der Sonne" wohl völlig chancenlose Alternative zur wörtlichen Übersetzung ;-)...
<I>- The answer to these questions is of course yes, and there is nothing new under the sun. </I> - Gewiss, und manche Dinge ändern sich [bekanntlich] nie.
Die Rede von der Sonne passt mE weder im AT noch in der Übersetzung...!
Das klingt in der Tat am besten, v.a. fügt sich der folgende Satz schön natürlich an. Keine Ahnung, ob mein Prüfer damit glücklich wäre, aber wenn ich die Prüfung noch mal schreiben müsste, dann wäre das meine Wahl. ;) 4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
Interestingly, I had never heard "Es gibt nichts Neues unter der Sonne" in German before and wouldn't have thought of it as a common expression. So it was good this was pointed out to me. In this context, I liked Anja's suggestion better but could imagine my examiner liking the bible quote better.
Thanks for all your interesting and helpful comments.
Interestingly, I have both things happen: sometimes I don't even recognize myself in the text and I think "this was a d*** good translator", and other times I now know better ways of rendering this or that. And, thanks to TMs, one is chasteningly reminded of one's own actual errors when the TM dishes them up again --- a word forgotten, The Typo That Got Away, a misinterpretation that may have been logical at the time but not in the light of further information on the same court case two years down the road etc. You're very brave!! ;-))
Perhaps one of the reasons that your own suggestion was marked down was that the examiners would have preferred you to translate the term literally. They wanted to know if you knew that "Es gibt nichts Neues unter der Sonne" is a common expression in German. Your avoiding it and using a colourless paraphrase instead was not satifsfactory. Also, as someone else has remarked, it is not the answer which is "old hat" it is the phenomen to which it refers.
Having another look at one's old errors is a great way of improving your performance, so good luck with your analysis! If I look at my very first commercial translations, I am not at all satisfied any more...
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +12
