Similarities between Da/ Hier

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R@re!
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Real Name:Rares
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Country:RORomania (România)
Similarities between Da/ Hier

Postby R@re! » 2020-06-21, 18:47

Da kommt eine neue Welle, Jungs.

This is a sentence I heard from a native speaker. He translated it as New wave incoming boys!. What baffles me is the fact that the speaker didn't offer a translation for da, which raises the question: Could da mean something else in this case? From what I know da is a locative adverb meaning here/there, which would make Here he comes. the more logical translation.

Another thing that I want to know is how to choose between there and here when translating da. Der Teller ist da comes to mind.

Also, could hier be used instead of da in this case without changing the meaning of the sentence?

Linguaphile
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Joined:2016-09-17, 5:06

Re: Similarities between Da/ Hier

Postby Linguaphile » 2020-06-21, 19:49

R@re! wrote:Da kommt eine neue Welle, Jungs.

This is a sentence I heard from a native speaker. He translated it as New wave incoming boys!. What baffles me is the fact that the speaker didn't offer a translation for da, which raises the question: Could da mean something else in this case? From what I know da is a locative adverb meaning here/there, which would make Here he comes. the more logical translation.


"Da kommt..." means "here comes...." It's idiomatic and it's a common expression.
I would have translated it as "here comes a new wave, boys!"

New wave incoming boys isn't even close to a literal translation; actually in English it isn't even a complete sentence (to make it a complete sentence, using the same words you've given and only adding to it, you could say "There is a new wave incoming, boys!" or "a new wave is incoming, boys!"). And these still wouldn't be a literal translation of the German version, although they'd be a bit closer.
In that sense, based on what was used for the English translation, to me it comes off sounding like a photo caption or newspaper headline - something that can get the message across without needing to be a full sentence. (Social media would be another context where that would be likely.)
Anyway, I think the use of "incoming" (in place of simply "coming") might have been meant to convey the meaning of "da kommt," but it really isn't exactly the same. For some reason the speaker decided to express the imminent arrival of this "new wave" as "da kommt" ("here comes!") in German and "incoming" in English.

R@re! wrote:Another thing that I want to know is how to choose between there and here when translating da. Der Teller ist da comes to mind.

Da is a bit more fluid in meaning than the English terms. Hier means "here" and if the speaker is contrasting hier with da then da means "there". But da is sometimes also used for "here", in idiomatic expressions (like da kommt), and on its own it can be used to mean "here" in, well... pretty much any situation in which it isn't being contrasted with hier. It's also regional, with da more commonly used as a synonym for "hier" in the south. You'll just have to rely on context.
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