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Glossary entry

German term or phrase:

Generation Praktikum

English translation:

generation of eternal interns / génération précaire

Added to glossary by Craig Meulen
Oct 15, 2006 14:41
20 yrs ago
German term

Generation Praktikum

German to English Social Sciences Human Resources
Any ideas how I can translate this in-phrase - coined only last year by a journalist from "Die Zeit" and now to be heard all over the place in Germany.

Context is a speech to an international audience about personnel management in the public service.

"Gehören diese [Menschen] nicht eher zu einer Generation Praktikum?"

Thanks for your help.
Proposed translations (English)
3 (generation) of eternal interns
3 +2 Generation internship
3 -1 generation apprenticeship

Discussion

Francis Lee (X) Oct 16, 2006:
What the speaker basically means is a generation of young people who go from one Praktikum to the next, i.e. are exploited by employers who never actually take them on? Perhaps something like a "vicious circle" of internships / non-paid apprenticeships?
RobinB Oct 15, 2006:
The UK universities that send us student *interns* every year have no problems with the term, neither do the UK students themselves. I think "intern" is now understood internationally. You can certainly lose track of the vernacular. I don't.
Lancashireman Oct 15, 2006:
and to adopt international usage – nothing wrong with that, of course. ‘Internship’ is simply not understood by a general readership (‘real’ or ‘unreal’) in the UK. (And yes, sometimes we have more tolerance for Gallicisms than Americanisms!)
Lancashireman Oct 15, 2006:
An interesting though spurious distinction has been introduced between the ‘real world’ and some other unspecified ‘world’. When one leaves the UK to live and work in a foreign country, it is possible to lose track of the vernacular
RobinB Oct 15, 2006:
And I'd avoid using the French term like the plague, because nobody in the real world will have a clue in hell what it means.
RobinB Oct 15, 2006:
I really don't think there's a GB/US issue here, not in the real (non-translator) world, at least. The term "internship" is also widely used in the UK for what are also known there as "work placements". An "apprenticeship" is *not* a Praktikum, anywhere!
Craig Meulen (asker) Oct 15, 2006:
To avoid the GB/US "intern" issue, what do you think of taking the corresponding term from France "génération précaire", since the use of French terms seems to be more accepted than that of German, and Google give sa few uses of the French term in English documents.

Proposed translations

17 hrs
Selected

(generation) of eternal interns

Nietzsche lässt grüssen ;-)

But it could be an option.

Thus, the potential span of an intern's career before getting licensed could be more than 10 years. It's what I call being the "eternal intern."
http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads_print.php?id=30953_0_...

Younger photographers are being shuttled from publication to publication without any appreciable increase in earning power. It is the time of the eternal intern.
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue9912/editorial.htm

Otherwise, perhaps something with "vicious circle" (as suggested at top)

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 18 hrs (2006-10-16 08:48:27 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

... force loads of youngsters with University degrees into perpetual internship contracts for years (see these recent German articles on the topic Späte Rache nicht ausgeschlossen and Generation Praktikum).
http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/discuss/msgReader$1537
(and no, the German reference was by chance, i.e. I didn't Google for it!)
Note from asker:
:-) Great minds think alike - I had also thought of the "eternal intern" - but didn't think to google for it and see if others use it too ....
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "In the final version of the speech I didn't use the "eternal interns" wordplay, but I did re-phrase. I think "the intern generation" might catch on in English, but it doesn't seem to have become established yet."
-1
11 mins

generation apprenticeship

The "Generation Praktikum" (describing the phenomenon that most people leaving university are starting their professional careers as interns - without long-term contracts but with low salaries) is all over the German papers (this week also on the cover of SPIEGEL's hard copy version). I also remember Thomas Knüwer's blog, which some days ago had a nice little story on how interns are being (ab-)used in PR agencies.
http://andreswittermann.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/08/index.ht...

And things aren’t looking much
better for our university-educated
young professionals. In Germany,
there is a new buzzword making the
rounds: “Generation Praktikum,”
or in English “generation apprenticeship”.
And indeed, there is now an entire generation
of highly skilled, flexible, and mobile young people that
are forced to move from one (mostly unpaid) internship
to another, sometimes for years. Instead of welcoming
these young professionals with open arms, as most
well-functioning economies would do, our much-heralded
labour market, which prides itself on “inclusion” and
“protection”, is creating nothing but fear and insecurity
among the very people we need the most to sustain our
future prosperity.
www.lisboncouncil.net/force-download.php?file=/media/commen...
Peer comment(s):
disagree RobinB : Sorry, Kim, but an "internship" is a very different beast to an "apprenticeship" (Lehre), especially in Germany with its established apprenticeship system. Many "Praktika" for graduates in Germany are unpaid. There are also "pre-apprenticeship" Praktika.
7 mins
I think we've got a US vs. British issue on our hands. http://www.theapprenticerules.com/
disagree Steffen Walter : Why "apprenticeship" (Lehrstelle/Ausbildungsplatz)? A Praktikum is a (paid or unpaid, depending on the situation) internship (AmE) or work placement (BrE) but not a Lehrstelle/Ausbildungsplatz.
8 mins
http://www.theapprenticerules.com/
agree Lancashireman : It’s been said before here: unless the translation is specifically for an American readership, any use of ‘intern(ship)’ is going to cause confusion because of associations with locking up enemy aliens. ‘Apprenticeship’ fits the journalistic style fine.
1 hr
Something went wrong...
+2
16 mins

Generation internship

Generation internship.

Apprenticeship= Ausbildung (Dualsystem)
Peer comment(s):
agree RobinB : or "Generation Intern" or even the "Intern Generation".
3 mins
agree Steffen Walter : "The Intern(ship) Generation" (for the purpose of a headline).
4 mins
agree swisstell
4 mins
neutral Lancashireman : Might work in the US, I suppose. But even there you wouldn’t try to sell a soft drink with a jingle that goes ‘Come alive. You’re in the Generation Pepsi’.
3 hrs
disagree Francis Lee (X) : if anything, surely "Intern(ship) Generation"
17 hrs
Something went wrong...
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