How encouraging!

[pne]

German doesn’t seem to have a good translation for “to encourage someone to do X”.

The literal translation of “encourage” is “ermuntern”, but that seems… wrong to me in that situation. Not quite the right shade of meaning.

I wonder how best to render it? Perhaps with “jemandem empfehlen, X zu tun” (recommend that someone do X)?

On the other hand, years of translationese may make “ermuntern” sound right to Germans in some years’ time….

Comments

[green_knight]

That depends on the meaning of 'encourage' you are after. If you mean the supportive kind - 'c'mon, you can do it' I might go for 'jemanden unterstützen, x zu tun' (ok, that's 'support' but... I've heard 'encourage to' used in that way). 'Ermuntern' I'd use for the 'other person is dragging their heels' kind of encouage, but if you mean the slightly ironic 'encourage' (or else-) I'd go with 'jemanden dazu bringen, x zu tun.'

[schnurble]

For myself, I ususally translate "encourage" as "ermutigen", which is pretty literal, because courage = Mut :o)