Mea Culpa: A Christmas dip into German

A translation glitch, some confusing numbers and a popular journalistic cliché in this week’s Independent

A festive splash in a tautological lake (Reuters)

In a picture story about the things people do on Christmas Day, we said in a caption: “Members of ice swimming club ‘Berliner Seehunde’ – which means Berlin Seals – take a dip in the Orankesee lake in Berlin as part of their traditional Christmas ice swimming session.”

John Harrison wrote to say that see means lake in German, and that the word “lake” was therefore redundant. We should not assume that Independent readers know German, but I think we can assume that if something is called the Orankesee, it is in Berlin and people are taking a dip in it, it is probably a lake, even if see can also mean sea.

Of course, the names of many geographical features are tautological because of language differences. Lake Tahoe means Lake Lake. The Sahara Desert means Desert Desert. The River Avon means River River. So there is nothing terribly wrong with Orankesee Lake. But, having gone to the trouble of translating Seehunde, we had already done enough to allow the readers to work out for themselves that seals are sea-dogs in German, and that the Orankesee is a body of water.

Less than zero: Mr Harrison also pointed out a news agency story that we should have rewritten: “Almost 60 per cent of household rubbish in refuse bins could have been recycled, costing councils more than £50m a year, a new report has revealed.”

This opening sentence is hard to read. It implies that more recycling would have added to councils’ costs, but is obviously intended to mean that the failure to recycle more is costing councils extra in landfill charges. Instead of “costing”, we should have said “saving”.

That is not the end of the story, however, because it becomes clear later on that the £50m figure is an estimate by an environmental pressure group, Zero Waste Scotland, based on the typical cost of landfill. Yet nowhere in the report is the reader told what the cost of recycling the same amount of rubbish would be, and indeed whether there would be any saving at all.

Recycling may be good for the environment, but it is no good pretending that it can be done at zero cost.

Tabloidese: I wonder if I have ever heard anyone use “amid” in normal speech. Yet we used this journalese word 55 times last week. I know it is useful in our trade for joining two things that may not be directly connected by cause and effect, but this is a temptation that ought to be resisted.

In sport, we said “the game ended amid controversy”, when “in controversy” would have been fine. In foreign affairs, we said that Steve Bannon had “left the White House in August after seven months in office, amid infighting with members of Mr Trump’s family”, when “after clashing” would have been better.

In business, we said that demand from carmakers in China for cobalt, used in batteries, “looks set to rise amid a surge in electric vehicle sales”. There would have been nothing wrong with “because of” there. If we were short of space, which we are not in these digital-only days, we could have written “as electric vehicle sales surge”.

That article had a classic journalese headline: “Cobalt frenzy sparked by electric car batteries to ramp up further next year.” That is pretty much all the journalistic clichés in one story, as a flash from the battery ignites a frenzy which drives the cobalt up a ramp. We could at least have illustrated it with a diagram.