Zuständigkeit — competence, jurisdiction, the area for which one is responsible. German organisations and public bodies define it precisely, and disputes about it are real disputes. Dafür bin ich nicht zuständig is not an evasion. It is a statement about where the authority sits.
words
Words for not wasting
Verschwendung — squandering. A strong word in German, applied to time, money, materials and talent alike.
Sparsam — thrifty, and it is praise. Applied to a person, an engine or a design.
Aus wenig viel machen — to make much from little.
Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, ist des Talers nicht wert — who does not honour the penny is not worthy of the thaler.
The undeclared major
American students commonly enter university without choosing a field and declare in their second year. The system is built to permit a late decision, and changing afterwards is routine.
The conduct of a proof
Proof-leading. German separates the Beweis, the proof, from the Beweisführung, the conducting of it.
You can be right and have your Beweisführung attacked. The two are assessed separately, and the second is where the argument usually happens.
Actionable
An American business adjective applied to information, and used as a test rather than a description. Is this actionable? Information that fails it is not called wrong or incomplete. It is called interesting — which in that context is a dismissal.
Bang for the buck
Bang for the buck. You get what you pay for. Penny wise, pound foolish. Cheap is expensive.
Four American sayings about price and quality. All four assume the two are linked, and none of them describes quality as a thing that could be assessed on its own.
Turf
Turf war. Land grab. Empire building. Not in my sandbox. American vocabulary for internal power struggle is territorial and about scope of control. None of it is about who writes the procedures.
The duty to give reasons
Begründungspflicht. German courts and authorities are under a duty to give reasons. A judgment carries a Begründung — a grounding — as a mandatory part of the document, not a courtesy.
A decision without adequate reasons is defective as a decision, regardless of whether the outcome was right.
The reasoning is not an explanation of the ruling. It is part of it.
Called to the field
Berufung means vocation or calling — and the same word is used for the formal appointment of a professor to a chair. The word treats the taking up of a field as something one is called to rather than something one selects.
The vocabulary of made things
Wertarbeit — value-work. Craftsmanship, but the compound names the value rather than the craft.
Qualitätsarbeit, Wertigkeit, solide, gediegen — four more German words of approval for a made thing, and none of them is about appearance.
Billig und schlecht — cheap and bad, spoken as a single phrase, as though the two were the same observation.