It’s bad enough coping with this while learning Russian where the cultural assumptions are so very different from English that translation of anything but the simplest most obvious text is a mine full of pitfalls. I have learnt my lesson. No more feeble attempts at German translation. I hang my head in shame and retreat into my burrow. From now on I shall support our leaving the EU, on the basis that as you Germans don’t think we are capable of communicating with us, there is clearly no point.
