33 Comments
How does one know in this case that it is "who published her" (marked correct) or "who has she published" (marked incorrect)?
In the latter case, I think it would be Wem hat sie veröffentlicht? (whom in English)
"Wen hat sie veröffentlicht" is what you're looking for
"Wem... " would be dative, i.e. "to whom has she published", which doesn't really make sense in either language without further explanation in the sentence (maybe you'd be referring to her audience, but you'd very rarely, if ever, put it like this)
I believe it would be better if sentence was: Wer hat es veroffentlicht". You cannot publish the person (sie). Who published it?
Not only agreeing with what conman318 has to say, but I have more to add. We must realise that German is very contextual. This sentence could as easily have been "Who has published them?" (Them for a certain pile of books).
However, going with your translation too, let us imagine a conversation about a certain newspaper that you are reading with your friend.
You: Na ja, eine gute Zeitung! Friend: Wer hat sie veröffentlicht?
One must realise that although the English translation is still 'who published it?', it will be written as 'sie' because of Zeitung being female.
I hope that clears it out a bit. Prost!
It does, thanks, especially the use of "sie" instead of "es" that till now I didn't understand
I don't know if you are referring to German or English, but sentences about "publishing a person" are actually extremely common in English, especially in academic circles.
Professors would say "I have been published", or "has she been published yet?" about another person. "Who published her?" would be like saying "In which publication has her work been published?"
I see it from your perspective as well. I interpreted it as "who has published her," as in: in what publication can I find her work. I don't think my answer was necessarily right, because of nuances in the language. But I don't think it was necessarily wrong either. I need to learn the nuances, and that's almost more difficult than learning the actual language.
I don't get why 'who has she published?' is incorrect, in the sense that she is a publisher (of books or magazines, etc) and we are asking which authors she has published. 'whom has she published?' might be grammatically correct but 'who' is widely accepted and certainly understood. Is German more strict about this and requires 'wen hast sie veroffentlicht' for 'who/whom has she published?' Or even 'wem' instead of 'wen'?
Hi, German is strict, always, when it comes to case. Meaning this sentence could never be equivalent to "who has she published".
That would be, as you suggest, "Wen hat sie veröffentlicht?", which is a completely fine sentence / translation. The formal translation of that German sentence is (again, as you suggest) "Whom has she published?", but that kind of formality is generally over-the-top.
885
I found out in high school (a very long time ago) that learning German improved my English. Keep it strict!
- 106
"Who posted her?" It is wrong, why? I thought that this sentence was relative of youtube,facebook or something like that
Facebook, at least, uses the verb posten. Dict.cc also suggests this is common in internet contexts.
"Who has published IT" comes up as the correct answer on the Android pkatform. Wieso?
There are a lot of nouns that have a gender in German (= "er/ihn", "sie") and not in English (= "it"). So the "sie" here could be referring to any one of those nouns (e.g. die Notiz, die Seite, die Website, die Verhandlung etc. etc.), all of which would be referenced by "it" in English.
what about "who has them published?" As in, who are the books published by.
- 681
As in "who caused the books to be published" (which may not be the same people as the publishers). This is called a "causative verb" construction: you don't do the action, but you make someone else do it. E.g. I got my car cleaned, I had my hair cut. http://esl.about.com/od/grammarstructures/a/causative.htm
In German, they don't use "have" for this, so a word for word translation from "wer hat sie veröffentlicht" couldn't have any causative meaning. Instead they use "lassen" for this.
http://hhr-m.userweb.mwn.de/de-causative/
Good question - the English and the German don't quite run parallel here, though.
Wer = who, hat veröffentlicht = published, sie = them / her
If you're wondering about the tense, German uses the present perfect tense (Ich habe es gemacht, instead of ich machte es) far more often than English does. Translating into English using the present perfect tense is often plain wrong. Here it's unclear, but the safer option would be to translate using the simple past tense (published).
It's rarely wrong. In speech, German uses the present perfect for all past tense constructions. In English, we use present perfect when there is a 'continual' implication, and simple past when there isn't. So it's perfectly acceptable (without context) to translate any German perfect present sentence into either perfect present or simple past. Likewise, either construction in English can be translated into German perfect present.
The reason I said it's often wrong is more for the benefit of non-native speakers of English who don't yet get the difference between the two tenses (precisely because, as you say, there's no semantic difference in German).
I would argue translating into the present perfect in English often is wrong because it adds additional information into the sentence that's not in the original German sentence. To me it would imply the question "who has published her so far". Translating into German you can normally use both (although sometimes you use the German present tense to translate English present perfect)
How would you differentiate between "who has she published" and "who has published her" in German? I can only come up with "Wer hat sie veröffentlicht?"
- 681
Yes, it's tricky, since "sie" can mean either "she" or "her". However, German does make the distinction clear by making a strict difference between "who" and "whom" that we have let go in English.
"wer" is "who" - the person doing the publishing. "Wer hat sie veröffentlicht?" = who has published her?
"wen" is "whom" - the person getting published: "Wen hat sie veröffentlicht?" = who (whom) has she published?
I wrote "Who has she published." And it was rejected. But I think it's a correct translation. Can someone tell me why it isn't?
The other comments do a good job of explaining this, for example the comments by geojay. It has to do with wer vs wen.
I would have thought this sentence could also be translated as - "Who made them public?" Can anyone confirm?
Why is "who published it" a correct translation? Because it's used the german pronoun "sie" which is or feminine or plural, but not neutral. So, why is "who published it" also acceptable?
