chemenu/instructions/german-terminology.md

---
type: types/instruction.md
name: german-terminology
description: Which words stay English in German KB prose, which have a settled German form, and the register the pages are written in.
manual: true
---

# German terminology for `kb/`

Reference vocabulary for [kb/CONVENTIONS.md](../kb/CONVENTIONS.md#language)'s rule that this
instance's pages are written in German. The rule lives there; the word list lives here, because
it is lookup material rather than a norm and would otherwise be loaded on every write.

**This file belongs to the `german` language profile, not to the stack.** An instance writing in
another language deletes or replaces it - see
[kb-profiles.md](kb-profiles.md).

Derived from translating all 248 pages on 2026-08-29. Every entry below is a decision that was
made wrong at least once first - each cost a correction pass across published pages, which is why
they are written down instead of re-derived.

<!-- wikitool:toc -->
## Contents

- [Stays English](#stays-english)
- [Settled German](#settled-german)
- [Field labels](#field-labels)
- [Register](#register)
- [Scope](#scope)
<!-- /wikitool:toc -->

## Stays English

Established technical terms are not Germanized, in prose or in headings:

GitOps · Ownership Model · Reverse Proxy · Pull Request · Publish-Subscribe · Broker · Deployment
· Namespace · Cluster · Runner · Workflow · Container · Image · Volume · Secret · Token · Template
· Repository · Commit · Ingress · StorageClass · Pruning · Drift · Bootstrap · Tier · Dotfile ·
CI/CD · Restart Policy · Network Mode · Feature

Two are worth calling out because both were translated once and had to be rolled back:

- **`Skill`** is the name of a layer of this repo (`instructions/<name>/SKILL.md`,
  `.claude/skills/`), not a descriptive word. `Wiki-Skills`, `Workflow-Skills`, never
  „Fähigkeit".
- **`Secret`** likewise - „Geheimnis" was written 96 times across 8 pages before it was caught.
  `Secrets-Verwaltung`, `Secret-Injection`, `Cluster-Level-Secrets`.

**„Fähigkeit" is almost never the right word in this wiki.** `Capabilities` - the properties of a
build or runtime environment that something is routed by - stays English too:
`Build-Capabilities`, „Runner mit bestimmten Capabilities".

**Fixed phrases stay whole**, neither half-translated nor fully translated:

`Separation of Concerns` · `Single Point of Failure` · `Infrastructure as Code` ·
`Chicken-Egg Problem` · `Least Privilege` · `Source of Truth` · `Defense in Depth`

„Trennung der Concerns" and „Trennung der Zuständigkeiten" both happened, from a glossary entry
that offered the choice instead of making it. A list of phrases is not a list of options.

**Compounds take a hyphen:** `Container-Image`, `Job-Container`, `Template-Variablen`,
`Secrets-Verwaltung`, `YADM-Repository`. Keep them short - `Schriftzugriff`, not
„Schriftartzugriff".

## Settled German

| English | German | Note |
|---|---|---|
| reconciliation / to reconcile | Abgleich / abgleichen | Not „Abstimmung", including in compounds: `Abgleichsintervall` |
| claim | Aussage | **Never** „Anspruch" - that is a legal entitlement |
| desired state | Soll-Zustand | |
| ownership (in prose) | Verwaltung / Zuständigkeit | But `Ownership Model` and `Ownership-Tier(s)` stay, **including as a heading** |
| built-in | -eigen (`K3s-eigen`) | |
| deprecated | abgelöst | |
| encoding | Kodierung | |
| architectural decision | Architekturentscheidung | |
| key principle | Grundsatz | |
| open issues | Offene Punkte | |

## Field labels

| English | German |
|---|---|
| `**Purpose:**` | `**Zweck:**` |
| `**Owner:**` | `**Verantwortlich:**` |
| `**Language/Tech:**` | `**Sprache/Technik:**` |
| `**Use case:**` | `**Anwendungsfall:**` |
| `**Author:** / **Date:** / **Raw files:** / **Type:**` | `**Autor:** / **Datum:** / **Raw-Dateien:** / **Typ:**` |
| `**Maintainer:**` | unchanged - established, not „Pfleger" |
| `**Features:**` | unchanged |
| `**Website:**` | unchanged - „Webseite" is one page, not the site |

The **value** after a label is not a label: `**Typ:** technology` keeps its schema enum, and an
author name, a date or a file path is never translated.

For a label with no entry here, translate to the point and keep it short. If the English term is
established in German technical usage, leave it.

## Register

Factual, impersonal, Wikipedia tone - and specifically **no „Sie"**. English source material is
full of imperatives, and the obvious German rendering is the polite form, which is wrong here:

- „Use `gpg --recv-key KEY_ID` to import keys" → „Zum Importieren von Schlüsseln
  `gpg --recv-key KEY_ID` verwenden" - infinitive at the end, not „Verwenden Sie …".
- „Ensure the backend supports IPv6" → „Sicherstellen, dass das Backend IPv6 unterstützt".
  Separable verbs are joined up again.

This was by far the most common error of the migration - **182 occurrences across 43 pages**, and
none of them structural, so no check found them. It is the one thing to watch for when translating
instructional prose.

- **Quotations are never reworded**, neither translated nor moved into the impersonal register.
- Buzzwords and AI filler are banned by [kb/CONVENTIONS.md](../kb/CONVENTIONS.md#tone); the
  German list is there.
- Dash as ` - `, not `—`.
- German number formatting only in prose („10.000 Punkte"). Never inside code, version numbers or
  measurements (`75-85 px`, `10m`, `0.90`).

## Scope

This is about prose in `kb/`. What is prose and what is an identifier - titles, headings, wikilink
targets, cite-ids, enum values, tags, code - is decided by
[kb/CONTRACT.md](../kb/CONTRACT.md#language-and-identifiers), not here.