Talk:Democratic Beginning: Difference between revisions

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{{WikiProject Politics |importance=Low |political-parties=yes |political-parties-importance=low}}

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{{old move|date=17 August 2025|destination=Demokratischer Aufbruch|result=Moved to alternate title|link=Special:Permalink/1309577216#Requested move 17 August 2025}}

==Title==

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== Requested move 17 August 2025 ==

{{requested move/dated|Demokratischer Aufbruch|protected=Democratic Beginning}}

:”The following is a closed discussion of a [[Wikipedia:Requested moves|requested move]]. <span style=”color: var(–color-error, red);”>”’Please do not modify it.”'</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a [[Wikipedia:move review|move review]] ”’after”’ discussing it on the closer’s talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.”

The result of the move request was: ”’Moved to alternate title.”’ In regards to the proposed name, users were divided as to whether a non-English title would be appropriate. Amongst users who both agreed and disagreed with the proposed title, there is an apparent consensus that ”’Democratic Awakening”’ as a more common name and more accurate translation. <small>([[Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions#Closure by a page mover|closed by non-admin page mover]])</small> [[User:Estar8806|estar8806]] ([[User talk:Estar8806|talk]]) [[Special:Contributions/Estar8806 |★]] 23:54, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

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[[:Democratic Beginning]] → {{no redirect|Demokratischer Aufbruch}} – As emerged in the previous discussion, the name of this party is translated both as “Democratic Awakening” and “Democratic Beginning”; since it is unclear which translation is better and more widespread, it is best to move the page to the party’s original name

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:::But this discussion about whether “awakening” is the most appropriate translation is secondary to my primary argument, which is based on [[WP:COMMONNAME]] and [[WP:ENGLISH]]. Even if the English translation wasn’t entirely accurate, it should still be the article title if it’s the clear common name. [[User:Malerisch|Malerisch]] ([[User talk:Malerisch|talk]]) 00:15, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

*”’Oppose”’ and ”’support move to [[Democratic Awakening]]”’, as per {{u|Number 57}} and {{u|Malerisch}}. Aside of the mentions to [[WP:ENGLISH]], [[WP:NCPARTY]] is very clear that native names should only be used when they are commonly used by English-language media. [[WP:COMMONNAME|Recognizability is important]], and I do not see how could this be the case for “Demokratischer Aufbruch”. [[User:Impru20|”'<span style=”color:#E65B00;”>Impru</span><span style=”color:#0018A8;”>20</span>”’]]<sup>[[User talk:Impru20|talk]]</sup> 16:57, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

<div style=”padding-left: 1.6em; font-style: italic; border-top: 1px solid #a2a9b1; margin: 0.5em 0; padding-top: 0.5em”>The discussion above is closed. <b style=”color: var(–color-error, red);”>Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.</div><!– from [[Template:Archive bottom]] –>

</div><div style=”clear:both;” class=></div>

German is my mother tongue. The word “Aufbruch” does not translate into “Awakening;” not even close. The roots of both words have analogues in the other language. “Bruch” from “brechen” to “break” and “wake” from “wachen,” to wake, to awaken.

Of the translations given in my dictionary, “decampment” is the best for “Aufbruch,” since the GDR was to be undone, decommissioned, analogous to breaking camp.

The mistranslation leads to another question. Why would a Democratic Republic need a Democratic Awakening, when it is in the process of decampment, decommissioning?
76.11.95.137 (talk) 16:43, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely agree – “Awakening” is an awful mistranslation of “Aufbruch”. I can’t think of any context in which it would be correct. Should have been fixed years ago. (I guess the original author chose it because it starts with an A and thus works nicely for the acronym DA…?) I changed it to “Beginning”, per [1]. That’s much closer to the meaning of “Aufbruch” in this context. But it’s not really a translation either, more of a reinterpretation. Is there a better term? LEO lists several English words for “Aufbruch”, e.g. “decampment” and “departure”, but they are too literal. LEO also has “dawn of mankind” for “Aufbruch der Menschheit”, which is fine, but “Democratic Dawn” would be a bit too poetic. There simply is no English word that has the same meaning as “Aufbruch”. I actually think we should just use the German term, like many other Latin-script language Wikipedias (ca:Demokratischer Aufbruch, da:Demokratischer Aufbruch, fr:Demokratischer Aufbruch, nl:Demokratischer Aufbruch, no:Demokratischer Aufbruch, sv:Demokratischer Aufbruch), and add something like German for “Democratic Beginning” or “Democratic New Start” in parentheses. — Chrisahn (talk) 22:45, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the page back to Democratic Awakening because that is how it is translated in the sources and for consistency with Awakening of German Patriots – Central Germany and Democratic Alliance for Diversity and Awakening. In any case I have nothing against moving the page to “Demokratischer Aufbruch”.–Scia Della Cometa (talk) 09:22, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Scia Della Cometa I just saw this. I think that was a bad decision, and I don’t know which sources you are talking about. The only English source in the article uses “Democratic Beginning”. Please move it back. Or move it to “Demokratischer Aufbruch”. P.S. You probably don’t speak German. If you did, you’d know that “Awakening” is not a good translation of “Aufbruch”. Please be more careful. — Chrisahn (talk) 19:16, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can see, most sources use ‘Democratic Awakening’, for example the IPU (whose reports are generally provided by the parliament in question, suggesting this might be an official translation), Triumph of the Fatherland German Unification and the Marginalization of Women, Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany etc. Number 5 7 23:16, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the sources. As far as I can tell, English-language sources from Germany tend to use “Democratic Beginning”, e.g. [2] (website by Deutsche Kinemathek and Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung), [3] (website run by Federal Foreign Office), [4] (website by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg). To me as a German native speaker it’s obvious that “awakening” is a mistranslation, and I think other Germans agree, e.g. at the Federal Foreign Office or the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (it doesn’t get much more official than that), and that’s why they chose “beginning”. — Chrisahn (talk) 23:42, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But “beginning” isn’t a perfect translation of “Aufbruch” either. The most direct German translations of “beginning” are “Beginn” and “Anfang”. These are semantically much closer to “Aufbruch” than “Erwachen”, which is the translation of “awakening”, but still not quite right. There simply isn’t an English word that captures what “Aufbruch” means and connotes in this context. Maybe we should rename the article to “Demokratischer Aufbruch”. It’s not uncommon for English Wikipedia pages about parties and other organizations to use their native names. — Chrisahn (talk) 23:51, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chrisahn Thanks for the sources about Democratic Beginning. However, I agree that if there’s any doubt about the best translation, it’s best to use the original name, therefore “Demokratischer Aufbruch”.–Scia Della Cometa (talk) 20:20, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer’s talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to alternate title. In regards to the proposed name, users were divided as to whether a non-English title would be appropriate. Amongst users who both agreed and disagreed with the proposed title, there is an apparent consensus that Democratic Awakening as a more common name and more accurate translation. (closed by non-admin page mover) estar8806 (talk) ★ 23:54, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Democratic Beginning → Demokratischer AufbruchDemokratischer Aufbruch – As emerged in the previous discussion, the name of this party is translated both as “Democratic Awakening” and “Democratic Beginning”; since it is unclear which translation is better and more widespread, it is best to move the page to the party’s original name
. Scia Della Cometa (talk) 11:37, 17 August 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 15:51, 24 August 2025 (UTC)— Relisting. Tenshi! (Talk page) 17:52, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support. As I said in the previous discussion, using the German name seems like a good option. Thanks for the RM. (Of course, we should mention both translations in the first sentence of the article. I just put “Democratic Awakening” back in. We can discuss the exact wording after the move.) —

Chrisahn (talk) 11:48, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per WP:ENGLISHTITLE. Not all English speakers understand German, so where an English name exists an English title is preferable, whichever one is most often used in the most reliable English-language sources, whether or not that name is a perfect translation. Station1 (talk) 02:25, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as “original” or official names have little bearing on article titling, but rather as Station1 mention, WP:ENGLISHTITLE and WP:COMMONNAME take priorty here. If there is mixed english usage, I would suggest that either title would be sufficiently appropriate with a redirect from the other title — seeing as that is already the case, I’m not sure there is a big need to make any changes, but I am definately opposed to the German spelling per policy. TiggerJay (talk) 05:57, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support Democratic Awakening as an alternative but do not support the move as proposed in the nom. TiggerJay (talk) 22:17, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Move to Democratic Awakening, which appears to be the common English name. It’s a bit hard to search for this given the generic words, but “Democratic Awakening” + “Wolfgang Schnur” gets 540 results while “Democratic Beginning” + “Wolfgang Schnur” gets 65 (a significant number of which are Wikipedia/Wikimedia/mirrors. The version with “Rainer Eppelmann” is 408 vs 65. Pinging @Tiggerjay and Station1: for consideration. Number 5 7 10:45, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed that it is difficult to research, but even looking at the google links you provided, once you weed the list down to reliable sources that are not obviously other wikis or influenced by wikipedia, there appears to be mixed support — even the Wolfgang Schnur uses “beginnings” instead of “awakening” in prose. When we look at the page title history, there is also quite mixed history, with both names being effectively the same. However, all of that said, I can see how there might be a bias towards “awakening” vs “beginnings” and wouldn’t oppose the move to awakening, but certainly oppose the original nom. TiggerJay (talk) 19:01, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Tiggerjay: The Schnur article only used ‘Democratic Awakening’ from its creation until Chrisahn moved this article to ‘Beginning’ in 2021 and still largely used it until the same editor changed it eleven days ago. Number 5 7 22:16, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I basically agree with TiggerJay. I have no strong opinion regarding Awakening vs Beginning. Station1 (talk) 06:28, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose – Better to have English names. Either the current one or “Democratic Awakening” are OK with me. —Checco (talk) 21:08, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support. We don’t have to translate absolutely everything into English and WP:UE certainly doesn’t mandate this (depsite the insistence by some editors that it does). In many cases it’s best to use the native name, especially when the translation is unclear. — Necrothesp (talk) 09:47, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody here has mentioned WP:UE. We have cited WP:ENGLISHTITLE: “On the English Wikipedia, article titles are written using the English language.” But even WP:UE recommends using names that “predominate in English-language reliable sources.” Station1 (talk) 19:50, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you haven’t noticed that WP:ENGLISHTITLE and WP:UE point to pretty much the same place? UE is the standard shortcut here. — Necrothesp (talk) 12:32, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

UE skips past the sentence I quoted. Station1 (talk) 18:57, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Move to Democratic Awakening per WP:ENGLISH, which says The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject that is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources. German-language titles should be left untranslated if that form is predominant in English-language reliable sources (an example is Die Linke), but in this case, such sources use the translated form of the name, and the title of this article should reflect that. Ngrams [5] shows that “Democratic Awakening” is much more commonly used than “Demokratischer Aufbruch”. “Democratic Beginning” doesn’t even appear in Ngrams; it’s clear that “Democratic Awakening” is the most common translation. Other sources, like The New York Times [6], The Washington Post [7], and Kati Marton‘s biography of Angela Merkel, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, all use “Democratic Awakening”.

I would also like to push back on the assertion that “awakening” is somehow a bad translation of “Aufbruch”. Both the Cambridge German–English dictionary [8] and the Oxford German Dictionary list “awakening” as a translation of “Aufbruch”; so does the user-generated dict.cc [9]. The discussion in the previous section tried to distinguish between “Aufbruch” and “Erwachen/wachen”—yet definition four of “Aufbruch” in Duden [10] is… “geistiges Erwachen und das Sicherheben”. The example that Duden provides is “der Aufbruch der Völker Afrikas”; “awakening” is in fact an appropriate translation in this sense. Malerisch (talk) 06:01, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your claim that “awakening” is an appropriate translation: That’s at best half true. Yes, some German-English dictionaries mention “awakening” as a translation of “Aufbruch”, but others don’t. The Duden example mentions “Erwachen”, but only in conjunction with “Sicherheben”. Most importantly, all the English-German dictionaries I checked provide “Erwachen” as a translation of “awakening”, some also have “Erweckung”, but none mention “Aufbruch”. An English reader who sees “Democratic Awakening” and doesn’t know the original name would expect it to be “Demokratisches Erwachen” or “Demokratische Erweckung”, but never “Demokratischer Aufbruch”. It’s a terrible translation. — Chrisahn (talk) 19:20, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It’s not though, because translations like this are not necessarily about being a word-for-word copy of what is in the other language, but about conveying the same meaning; ‘Democratic Awakening’ is a better translation than ‘Democratic Beginning’ because it is a logical phrase, whereas the latter is not so much, hence why the term ‘democratic awakening’ far outranks ‘democratic beginning’ in use in the English language. Another example would be the Danish Social Democrats whose Danish name literally translates as ‘Social Democracy’, but ‘Social Democrats’ is what would be used in English and so is how the party is known. Number 5 7 23:48, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. What’s a “logical phrase”? 2. Regarding “conveying the same meaning” – “awakening” does not convey the same meaning as “Aufbruch”. Far from it. — Chrisahn (talk) 00:05, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“Democratic Awakening” is a more common collocation in English compared to “Democratic Beginning”. Malerisch (talk) 00:15, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The question being debated here is “what is the best English translation of ‘Aufbruch’?”, not “what is the best German translation of ‘awakening’?”. This is an important distinction, as there is no reason to expect the most appropriate translations of English and German words to form a one-to-one correspondence. The statements “‘awakening’ is the best translation of ‘Aufbruch’ (in this sense)” and “‘Erwachen’ is the best translation of ‘awakening'” do not contradict each other. This sense of “Aufbruch” is somewhat literary (Duden notes it is “gehoben”), but “awakening” is probably still the closest translation. “Erwachen” is the standard translation for “awakening”.

But this discussion about whether “awakening” is the most appropriate translation is secondary to my primary argument, which is based on WP:COMMONNAME and WP:ENGLISH. Even if the English translation wasn’t entirely accurate, it should still be the article title if it’s the clear common name. Malerisch (talk) 00:15, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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