A good German to English translation of "Mittagspause"?

Question

Does anyone know where I can find a good translation of the German story "Mittagspause" by Wolf Wondratschek? Online translators, as we all know, are very poor and I need a better understanding of the story.

I don't need the translation of the WORD, but the story.

Answer 1

Here's my translation. It may have a few errors in it--my German is only at an intermediate level--but it should be enough to give you the gist. I'm also not sure about the paragraph divisions because I downloaded the story in RichText format and ended up having to extract the text manually. I'm not even entirely sure I got the whole thing, but it looks like I did. (I hope the story's in the public domain--I don't want to get into trouble with YA from a copyright standpoint if it isn't. I wanted to e-mail it to you, but you don't have a link on your profile.) Here goes:

She sits in the street-café. Right away she puts one leg on top of the other. She doesn't have much time. She leafs through a fashion magazine. Her parents know that she's beautiful. They don't like to see it.

For example: She has friends. Nonetheless, when a friend comes to her place she doesn't announce, "This is my best friend."

For example: The men laugh and look at her and imagine how she'd look without sunglasses.

The street-café is overcrowded. She knows exactly what she wants.

Also, at the table beside her, sits a girl with legs. She hates lipstick. She orders a coffee. Sometimes she thinks about movies and thinks about romantic films. Everything has to go quickly.

On Fridays there is enough time to order a cognac with the coffee. But on Fridays it rains often. With a pair of sunglasses it is simply not to become red [I couldn't make this line out too well, sorry; it looks like an idiom to me, or perhaps "rot" could refer to the lipstick]. It would be simpler with cigarettes. She regrets that she can't take a puff.

The lunch break is a toy. When nobody talks to her, she introduces herself the way she would if a man were to talk to her. She would laugh. She would give an evasive answer. Maybe she would say that the chair beside her was taken.

Yesterday someone spoke to her. Yesterday the chair was free. Yesterday she was happy that every aspect of her lunch break was going quickly.

At dinner [her] parents say to her that they were also young at one time. Father said that he only means well. Mother also says that she actually has anxiety. She replies that the lunch break is harmless.

Meanwhile, she has learned not to make any decisions for herself. She is a girl like other girls. She answers a question with a question. Even though she sits at the street-café regularly, the lunch break is more strenuous than writing letters. People watch her from every direction. She suddenly realizes that she has hands.

Her skirt is not to be stared at. The main thing is that she's on time.

In the street-café there are no drunks. She plays with her handbag. She doesn't buy a newspaper now. It's wonderful that in every lunch break a catastrophe could happen. She could be very late. She could be very much loved. If no waitresses come, she goes in and pays for the coffee at the bar.

At her typewriter she has a lot of time to think about catastrophes. "Catastrophe" is her favorite word. Without this favorite word, her lunch hour would be boring.

Answer 2

You would call it literally MIDDLE OF THE DAY BREAK

Answer 3

I also want to ask the same question

Answer 4

mid-day break.
mitt-middle
tags-day
pause-break

Answer 5

free translations.com