Talk:Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons

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Clarification Needed[edit]

Great work with translating this. I think that the history section needs to inform if this department originated in East Germany, West Germany or both (unlikely). The description "the result of a degenerate imagination" leads me to believe that this is a communist invention, but I could be wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.89.138.216 (talk) 16:11, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing this article again for the first time in years. This is an institution of the Federal Republic of Germany founded in 1954 (when the Federal Republic consisted only of "West Germany"), which is already clear from the contents of the article. "East Germany" (the GDR) ceased to exist over 20 years ago and none of its national institutions continue to exist today. The individual Bundesländer which were once part of the GDR were admitted to the Federal Republic upon German reunification. Valiantis (talk) 01:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Source of English-language translations[edit]

I'm using English translations as per the English-language section of the BPjM website at http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/information-in-english.html. The exception is where these translations fly in the face of normal English usage, particularly the phrase youth-endangering as a translation of jugendgefährdend! I have translated this as harmful to young people though harmful to children or harmful to minors capture the German sense at least as well. Valiantis 21:24, 3 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Forgot to record the request at Wikipedia:German-English translation requests: -

  • Article: de:Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien
  • Corresponding English-language article: I'm not at all sure what it should be.
  • Worth doing because: No corresponding English article; no corresponding decent English reference at all that I could find.
  • Originally Requested by: grendel|khan 17:16, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
  • Status: Someone's had a go at this already but it's flagged for translation clean-up. In my opinion it also needs to incorporate info from de:Indizierung as the BPjM article explains how the law works but doesn't really explain the consequences of a work being indiziert which is something a non-German audience would need to know to fully understand what the BPjM does. I'll have a look - Valiantis 20:07, 3 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Other notes: This came up on Talk:The Iron Dream; it's pretty difficult to get any good information about this German censorship board in English.

Valiantis 14:30, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I cleaned up the language of the article at one point, but it could use some explanation from a less German perspective. Certain phrases could use some more precise translation as well. Perhaps the article should be moved to an English title as well. Tfine80 14:35, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Could you be more specific as to which phrases need more precise translation? Before I worked on it yesterday and today there was a lot of unidiomatic wording; I think I resolved most of it. I'm not sure you can have a less German perspective on a specifically German organisation, but I may misunderstand what you mean. I'm in two minds about an English title. The English translation of BPjM at http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/information-in-english.html is Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (and I have glossed it as such in the article) but whilst this may be semi-official, it is also a very poor translation (the whole English page of the BPjM website reads as though it was translated by a native German speaker rather than a native English speaker) - Prüfstelle does not mean department and, in the context of government, department in (British) English normally refers in any case to a ministry rather than a subordinate agency; media is a very problematic term in English and the word is not used in the same way as Medien in German; young persons is very stilted - even in a formal context such as this - and young people would be preferable. Valiantis 22:31, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It looks a million times better. I'm not sure what the translated title should be. I only meant that before it made a lot of assumptions about what the reader understood regarding the German governmental system; now it is much more clear. Tfine80 00:33, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm going to leave it under the German title for now. There is a precedent for this with articles like Bundeskriminalamt and Strafgesetzbuch. Valiantis 11:17, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Great job! This is a much-needed article. After a first read-through, I agree that an international perspective would be helpful (is there similar legislation outside Germany, and if no: why does Germany have it?). Also, it still doesn't flow really well yet. A first suggestion would be to implement the above-mentioned change to "minors". Arbor 19:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously feel free to edit anything as you feel appropriate for the purposes of flow. However, I've changed my mind on the correctness of "minor" as a translation of the German "Jugend". German has a specific word for "minors" (minderjährige) and both the English and the German words have a specific legal sense. "Jugend" is a more nebulous term (the German WP gives varying definitions which range up to 25 years old), as is the English "young people" - in both languages "young people / die Jugend" are not explicitly under 18. The term "jugendgefährdend" might reasonably be conceived as paternalistic, the implication is that the alleged harm may not be limited to legal minors but to all those who are not fully mature "people of the world". This matches the actions of the BPjM, which do not simply result in media being made inaccessible to children, but also result in it being less accessible to anyone - as is outlined in the article. The more vague "young people" therefore hits the spot more accurately than the legally specific "minors". Valiantis 23:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your reasoning, though I am not sure I agree. Before I make up my mind, let me toss another suggestion into the bowl: adolescent. The National Legion of Decency uses the term for a similar objective, so there is precedent. Arbor 20:57, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No. Although the term Jugend tends to be applied to adolescents, it doesn't exclude pre-adolescent children as well, the English "young people" similarly doesn't exclude pre-adolescents. I suspect the BPjM would be bemused if it were suggested that they only aim to "protect" young people aged 13 and upwards. I don't see that the National League of Decency usage is relevant as this specifically sets out to separate adolescents from younger children.
Perhaps you could explain what you find so problematic with the use of "young people"; the term is widely used in governmental circles in the UK [1] and [2] (though it would appear somewhat less so in the US), so I don't see there's a problem with register. Valiantis 02:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see much wrong with it, which is why I don't change the article. However, the precise semantics of "Young people" is at least as ill-defined as any of the other suggestions. Are children young people? Are Jugendliche? Also, Wikipedia DE and EN all define Jugend, Adolescence, and Adoleszenz in exactly the same way (viz., the period between childhood and adulthood). All these terms are equally problematic. I still think minor is the most descriptive term—it describes the intended target group of the law, arguably better than the law itself does with Jugend. And it flows well. Arbor 10:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, forget everything I said. here is the English page of the BPjM itself which uses Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons. I think that settles it, and it is even linked upthread. Silly me; sorry for wasting your time. Arbor 11:01, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Added redirect, maybe move?[edit]

I added the redirect German List of Media Harmful to Young People and used it on the Die Ärzte page. In that context, the title works quite well: “The song was added to the German List of Media Harmful to Young People... ”, or “... because he voiced concerns about appearing on the German List of Media Harmful to Young People... ”. (I am not so sure about the capitalisation, though...) I think this is useful and a better link than “... added to the German Index”. I am sure a number of other WP-EN articles could link to this page.

Since I envision more potential links of this form than of the form “... appear on the list produced by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien...”, maybe we want the article to be about the List instead of about the Prüfstelle? Surely people who navigate here are interested less about the agency and more about its main product? In that case we might want to move the article. The article's contents is mostly about the list anyway, not the agency. Arbor 13:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I agree. I think no more than a third of the article is about the list itself and the remainder of the article is about the history, legal basis and workings of this agency of the German federal government. Generally speaking, I think we prefer articles on the organisation rather than on what the organisation does. Valiantis 15:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Biased?[edit]

I have a minor issue with this paragraph:

It would appear that German citizens in general approve the work of the BPjM or are indifferent to it, since there is no broad-based campaign against this work. Much of the current criticism of the organisation comes from young computer gamers, whose arguments may lack coherence. It might be argued therefore that there is a broad consensus in society in favour of the BPjM.

It seems a little biased to me. There are a lot of "mays" and "would appear" there and no solid facts. From my experience the majority of people aren't even really aware of what the BPjM does and most people (myself included) have no real opinion about the way the BPjM works. Most criticism stems from inconsistency in the ratings and ineffectiveness at times (for example River Raid being indexed and Doom 3 not), as well as questions about the need for such an organisation these days where the people it is designed to protect are actually the ones that usually have easiest access to the media. Contrary to the paragraph's claim, the few active opponents of the BPjM are from the arts commuity, media industries and gamers between 20 and 30 years of age. I'll have to grab a source to back this up, but the wording of this paragraph really bugs me. Jamyskis Whisper, Contribs Germany 19:57, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The broad content now in this paragraph was added some months ago by an anonymous user [3] and I rewrote to improve the language use etc., to separate out the pro- and counter-arguments which the additions had muddled in a confusing way, and also to remove the "worst" of the POV. There is probably more to be done, but I was reluctant to simply revert the additions (for obvious reasons) and didn't have time time to seek out additional sources etc. to improve the content. If you know where to look, this would be a helpful addition to the article. Valiantis 23:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article title[edit]

Great article. I am sort of leaning towards wanting its title to be English, whatever name is agreed upon; however, we do have Académie française rather than "French Academy" (and I wouldn't even consider the latter). --Saforrest 21:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Index in other countries[edit]

I just mentioned the impact of the German Index elsewhere. Seems pretty straightforward. The FSK ratings are enforced by law in Austria, and you really can't escape media from Germany here, esp. as SAT1 and Pro7 blanket Austria, too. samwaltz 21:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The FSK has no Connection to the BPJM - Can you give an example that is in context of the BPJM ?

Rewrote section about legal consequences[edit]

I completely rewrote the section about legal consequences, sticking closer to the law (Jugendschutzgesetz) that forms the base for them. Note that the enumeration does not aspire to be a literal translation. Sometimes I have shortened it a bit, sometimes I have added more info.

I removed the paragraph about other countries. It generally made broad, unverifiable (and unsourced) claims I could not confirm from my personal experience (I'm an Austrian). All the video games on the index, for example, are sold without any restrictions here in Austria. Of course, if the German version of a game is censored, it won't be un-censored for the negligible Austrian market, but usually you will find the uncensored US versions in some shops. And if Austria uses the FSK ratings, this has nothing whatever to do with the indexing process. — Graf Bobby 20:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As for the Saltzman book, this statement is unsourced, and I can't source it. I simply happen to own the German version of this book. If such a small, merely illustrative detail is to be considered origiinal research, then by all means remove it. — Graf Bobby 20:58, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Biased statement[edit]

The critique that the BPjM is an organisation unique to Germany ignores the fact that other western countries also have laws and mechanisms, albeit different in scope and practice, to prevent, for example, the sale of pornography to minors, holocaust denial, or racist literature and hate speech.

Example list no longer available[edit]

Had to remove the following external link because the page now seems to require prior registration in order to access the content:

--Lennier1 (talk) 23:34, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

the entire criticism section is unsourced[edit]

And of course, rather biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.12.245.132 (talk) 04:15, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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