Danish to German: related words still need different grammar
The receiver of an action is not its resulting state
Danish can build a passive with an s ending or with blive and a participle. German instead requires attention to the contrast between an event passive with werden and a state passive with sein. Duden illustrates this with Das Pferd wird gesattelt and Das Pferd ist gesattelt: the horse is being saddled versus being in a saddled state. A Danish account of work underway must not become a German claim that the work is already done.
This is a question about the intended message, not matching auxiliaries by appearance. In Danish instructions, an s passive can present a general procedure without naming the person who performs it. The German rendering must still identify whether the sentence describes the procedure, reports an event, or states a condition. An equipment instruction about an operation and a status message about the resulting condition need different readings even when they mention the same object.
Neither language requires an agent to be invented just because the wording is passive. If the Danish sentence deliberately leaves the performer unspecified, retain that focus in German. Conversely, a named performer can matter in a responsibility report. Replacing an event passive with a state description may remove precisely the action for which the Danish text assigns responsibility.
A familiar pronoun can change grammatical role
Danish distinguishes subject forms such as jeg and han from object forms such as mig and ham. The Danish Language Council explicitly notes that prepositions take object forms. This is a useful starting point when reading the source: do not mistake a person mentioned after a preposition for the person carrying out the action. German then needs its own case construction rather than a direct substitution of the Danish object form.
Ownership deserves a separate decision. Traditional standard Danish sin points to the subject, while hans or hendes can identify someone else as owner. The Language Council warns that regional usage differs and that nonfinite embedded constructions can admit two owners. Before selecting German possessive wording, resolve that relationship from the actual Danish clause. A word that resembles a familiar German possessive is not sufficient evidence about who owns the item.
Capital letters carry information inside a German sentence
German nouns keep their initial capitals in ordinary running text. Duden’s examples include Computer and Verantwortung, so a Danish source with lowercase common nouns needs more than sentence-initial capitalization in its German output. This applies equally to short interface labels and full paragraphs: removing internal capitals to imitate the Danish appearance would produce incorrect German spelling.
Respectful address also has its own convention. Duden requires Sie and the corresponding possessive Ihr to be capitalized, while reflexive sich remains lowercase. Danish has its own distinction between du and respectful De, but translating a Danish customer message requires choosing the intended German relationship first. Once that choice is made, capitals must consistently distinguish respectful address from unrelated third-person references; they are not merely optional politeness decoration.
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