Talk:Luftstreitkräfte

History
The official name of the Imperial German Army Air Service was "Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte", literally "German Airforce" and was founded in 1916. It consisted of the army airplanes, the army blimps, the AA, the army weather forecast and the Home defence. It had no command of the employment of forces in the field. It was primarily responsible for training and replacement. 132.230.129.192 10:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Fokker crash

 * [Photo of Fokker crash 21-April 1916 [reference only}] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.47 (talk) 12:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Airship numbers
German army and navy airships in WWI were "named" in the same way as destroyers and submarines - thus an airship "number" referred to an individual "ship" - not a type. Thus the various "airship designations" just don't belong here - it's something entirely different.--Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Unit designations
If someone bilingual could supply better definitions, it would very probably be a good thing.

On the other hand, as the listings previously stood, they were minimally comprehensible. So I kludged in Babelfish translations as a stopgap.

Georgejdorner (talk) 11:57, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

"Rough" and "literal" translations
"of the German Empire" and "Imperial German" mean precisely the same thing - to insist on either one as a better translation than the other (even in a literal sense) would be silly. The second is however much more natural English - and therefore a better translation, regardless of meaning. It's also what the force concerned is called in many English language sources. This is an English language article on a German subject - it may well read a little strangely to a native German speaker, but making translations of terms more "word for word" is not necessarily the way to "fix" this. We want it to be in English, not pseudo German - just as a German article on an English subject would need to be in natural German, not pseudo English. In any case, we need to concentrate on real rather than semantic inaccuracies. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 14:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * My point above (we have reverted without any discussion of it!) was that word for word translations are not necessarily any more "accurate" than sensible ones that take cognisance of ordinary English word order. Turning the lead for this (very poor) article into a largely irrelevant quibble over English as opposed to German word order seems to be a great shame. Please, unless you are prepared to discuss this all I can do is either rewrite this lead, or revert to its original form. As it is it is largely irrelevant. A valid and relevant point that is being lost is that the name change reflected real changes in the service itself. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:14, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi SOM. My last edit also adds two significant but often overlooked facts: (1) the distinction between the German army air services and their naval counterparts, which was not explicitly mentioned in the intro and; (2) the army air service operated Zeppelins and balloons.

I think also that this discussion illustrates a peculiar systemic bias: the German army air services are not well known by their German names (unlike the WW2 Luftwaffe) to English speakers. Instead we get a term that conflates two names, while not being anything like either of them. And if, for argument's sake, the German Wikipedia was referring to the Royal Flying Corps, RNAS and WW1 RAF as the "Britische Fliegerkorps", I think you might see what I mean(?)

Besides which I don't think reversion is justified on the basis that you think my version is a "largely irrelevant quibble".

Regards, Grant  |  Talk  07:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * PS FWIW, while the naval planes, balloons and Zeppelins (that carried out most of the air raids on England etc) were significant in themselves, there does not seem to have been an official "Imperial German Naval Air Service" as such, with the naval aviators and their "ships" being have been treated in much the same way as other personnel and vessels


 * Actually a good (and fairly literal) translation of "Royal Flying Corps" in German might well be something like "Englishe Fliegertruppen" or even "Fliegertruppen der englische Koenigreiches" (my German is VERY elementary and these are probably actually wrong, but you get the point I hope). "The Royal Air Force" translates into German as something like "Die englische Luftstreitkräfte" or "Die Luftstreitkräfte der englische Koenigreiches". Although I hope that a German wiki article on the Royal Air Force (or the Royal Flying Corps) would also identify the services concerned with their "native" titles as we do here for their German equivalents, the translations as translations are quite literal enough for practical purposes. I think you are a little muddled about what translation actually IS. Picking one word that is equivalent to one word in another language is highly fraught - language doesn't work that way - most words in one language can translate into quite a few different ones in most other languages, depending on context, idiom etc. A proper translation of a German sentence (phrase, title) into English (and vice versa of course) looks at the total meaning, not what each single word corresponds to in a dictionary. A "rougher" translation is often a better one. "Luftwaffe", for instance, is literally "Air weapon". "Air force" is obviously a very much better translation. It is less "word-for-word" but really no less accurate. And "Luftstreitkräfte" is even closer to "Air Force" in meaning than is "Luftwaffe"! Your other points are well taken - but I'd still like to see an explanation of the German titles for their WW1 air service that doesn't belabour word for word equivalents quite so heavily (and unnecessarily). --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * "I think you are a little muddled about what translation actually is." Not the first time you have made assumptions/pronouncements on my character/faculties, based on limited evidence. Fortunately I am not the insecure/sensitive type :-)


 * In fact, my translations were arrived at carefully, based on German dictionaries and my rusty but functional high school German.


 * If the point is to convey the general nature of the thing, the common translation "Imperial German Air Service" does that, but at the cost of nuance (i.e. the name change and the existence of the naval aviators.)


 * A "good (and fairly literal) translation" is not necessarily the best translation OR the "most literal".


 * "The translations...are quite literal enough for practical purposes." I disagree. And they are not literal at all.


 * As you say, "Luftstreitkräfte" is close to "Air Force". But I would prefer "Air Combat Forces", which also captures the streit in the middle and the fact that kräfte is plural.


 * A lesser problem is that more neutral/prosaic (not literal) translations do not capture the archaic nature of terms like "Fliegertruppen" and the feel of the era. But I would be OK with "German Imperial Aviation Troops" instead of "Aviation Troops of the German Empire".


 * Do we really have a problem? Grant  |  Talk  04:54, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * PS And sometimes things are less archaic than they might seem. To cite two examples:
 * * "Aviation troops show Iraqis importance of NCO Corps" (US Army newsletter, referring to its own Aviation corps, 2010)


 * * "Disbanding the Air Combat Force" (a book chapter regarding the RNZAF, 2009)
 * Grant |  Talk  05:12, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * "I think you are a little muddled about what translation actually IS." probably wasn't the most sensitive way of putting it. I didn't mean to be personal - just to point out that picking over word for word isn't always (ever?) the best way of translating. "Fleigertruppen" is VERY close to "Flying Corps", as "Luftstreitkräfte" is close to "Air Force", so the change of name is very close indeed to the (later) change of name and organisation on the British side. We do need to bring this out, I feel. Otherwise, I don't think we DO have a major problem here really - I'll do a rewrite of this lead when I've a moment, as the basis for building a better article - and we can carry our discussion on from there. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

We have the following articles on the US counterparts of the Fliegertruppen/Luftstreitkräfte/Luftwaffe: My point here is not that we should split this article, but that such name changes are important, including the precise meaning/implications of each name.
 * Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps 1 August 1907–July 18, 1914
 * Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps 18 July 1914–May 20, 1918
 * Division of Military Aeronautics 20 May 1918–May 24, 1918
 * Air Service, U.S. Army 24 May 1918–July 2, 1926
 * United States Army Air Corps 2 July 1926–June 20, 1941
 * U.S. Army Air Forces [note the plural] 20 June 1941–September 18, 1947
 * United States Air Force 18 September 1947–present

After further thought, I will concede that truppen is a reasonable fit for "corps" (in the sense of service/branch), which then gives us "German Imperial Flying Corps".

However, Luftstreitkräfte (plural) is more problematic. If the German high command meant "air force" (singular) it would have been "Luftkräft", Luftwaffe or possibly even something else, and -streit- would have been omitted. I have seen Luftstreitkräfte translated in various ways, such as "Air Fight Forces" and "Air Conflict Forces", but I think these are awkward and/or un-military, compared to "Air Combat Forces". (FWIW "dogfight" and "air battle" are both usually translated as Luftkampf, whereas streit is more general/abstract.)

Grant |  Talk  09:32, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Someone whose German is even worse than yours (or even mine) edited out the "strike" bit, took the opportunity to mess a bit with the lead again. If you want to persist with the idea that this word needs to go back in I'd really prefer "combat" - "strike" has come to mean what a light bomber or fighter bomber does to support ground troops (in WWI parlance, "strafing"). --Soundofmusicals (talk) 02:17, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

If I may add to this discussion about translations, I think translations should be more idiomatic or rather, reflect the way we would describe the same thing in English, rather than to make a literal translation. A good translator does this, when translating for a speaker.

Specifically, I think translating "Jagd" in "Jagdstaffeln," "Jagdflieger", etc, as "hunting" is clumsy, literal though it may be. In English, we would use "fighter", or even better, in the usage contemporary to the Great War, we'd call them "pursuit"--"pursuit squadrons", "pursuit planes", etc.

In American usage, "pursuit" persisted as a designation until 1948, when the newly organized USAF replaced it with "fighter"; it had generally been replaced in public usage by "fighter", though, by our entry into WWII.

So while it might be of interest to those with a philological bent to note that the literal translation is "hunter" and "hunting", stylistically it's better to use "pursuit" or "fighter".

Best regards! TheBaron0530 (talk) 19:03, 22 September 2015 (UTC)theBaron0530