Don’t get personal. Said when a discussion has left the matter and started to be about the people in the room.
It is not a plea for politeness. In German usage it is a correction — you have stopped talking about the problem, and you need to go back.
Network planning
Netzplantechnik. Network planning technique. German project management teaches critical path analysis under its own name, with its own DIN definitions, as part of engineering and business curricula. The dependencies between tasks are modelled explicitly before the work starts.
The prescribed cure
A German physician can prescribe a Kur — a multi-week stay at a spa or rehabilitation clinic, substantially funded by the health or pension insurance. Exhaustion is treated as a medical condition with an institutional remedy, and the time away does not come out of holiday entitlement.
The documentation duty
German law requires documentation of the process in regulated fields — pharmaceutical manufacture, medical devices, food production, construction. What was done, by whom, when, to which specification. The record is not evidence that the work was done properly. In German regulatory logic, an undocumented step was not properly done.
The principle of equivalence
Das Äquivalenzprinzip. The principle of equivalence — that what each side gives should correspond to what each side receives. It is not an aspiration in German law. It is a working concept that courts apply, and a disturbed equivalence is a ground for intervention.
The testing foundation
Stiftung Warentest. A foundation established by the federal government in 1964 that tests consumer products and publishes comparative results with numerical grades. It takes no advertising. A poor grade is commercially serious, and a good one appears on packaging for years.
The matter-book
German splits books into Belletristik and Sachbuch. Fine writing, and matter-book.
English calls the second category non-fiction — defined by what it is not. German names it for what it contains.
Evidence before the lawsuit
Das selbständige Beweisverfahren. German law allows a party to have evidence formally secured and examined by a court-appointed expert before any lawsuit is filed, particularly in construction disputes. The investigation can precede the conflict, and frequently ends it.
The work instruction
Die Arbeitsanweisung. The work instruction. A controlled document describing how a specific task is performed, with a version number, an author, an approval and a review date. It is not a note. It is part of the quality system, and changing it requires going through the system.
The company shutdown
Betriebsferien. Many German companies close entirely for a fixed period, commonly in summer or between Christmas and New Year, with the works council agreeing the dates. Nobody is covering. Nobody is on call. The building is shut.