Help with German translation please

[Researcher]

Could someone please translate this into English.
It refers to the German steel 'magnate' Bernard Weiss

Generalbevollmachtigter der firma Friedrich Flick KG.
Vorsitzender und Mitglied zahlreicher Aufsichtsrate der Industrie,
Wehrwirtschaftsfuhrer.

Many thanks
Researcher

[David Thompson]

Generalbevollmachtigter der firma Friedrich Flick KG.
Vorsitzender und Mitglied zahlreicher Aufsichtsrate der Industrie,
Wehrwirtschaftsfuhrer.

General representative of the Friedrich Flick corporate firm,
Chairman and classed as member of the Board of Industry,
War Economy Leader

Weiss, Bernhard -- {indicted 8 Feb 1947 by an American military tribunal of being an executive in the industrial empire of Friedrich Flick, and of using slave labor in wartime production (NYT 9 Feb 1947:1:2); arraigned 15 Mar 1947 (NYT 16 Mar 1947:30:3); judges named 12 Apr 1947 (NYT 13 Apr 1947:46:4); convicted 22 Dec 1947 of war crimes and crimes against humanity (NYT 23 Dec 1947:11:1; NYT 16 Mar 1948:35:2; NYT 20 Apr 1948:12:5); convicted 22 Dec 1947; sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison (LT 23 Dec 1947:3d). (Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals vol. VI, pps. 1194-1223; Holo Ency 1790).}

[Researcher]

Thanks for that

Regards
Researcher

[thomas]

Dear all

David made a very good translation. Only one small part of the translation ist not correct

Mitglied zahlreicher Aufsichtsräte der Industrie

Member of several (many) boards of industrial companies.

I know that because i live in the german part of Switzerland and my mothertongue is german.

thomas

[observer]

Mitglied zahlreicher Aufsichtsräte der Industrie

Member of several (many) boards of industrial companies.

Vorsitzender und Mitglied zahlreicher Aufsichtsräte der Industrie

was the full phrase, meaning exactly:

"He was a member of numerous advisory boards of industrial firms and presided some of these boards as its chairman."

Any other bids?

[Karl da Kraut]

"Chairman and member of numerous SUPERVISORY boards of the industry" would be an almost literal translation.

I'm not sure how to translate the term "Aufsichtsrat" as the typical Anglo-American business structure offers no real equivivalent.

A member of the board would be a "Vorstandsmitglied" in German terms. These guys are the managers that really run the company. The board is subordinate to the "Aufsichtsrat" that, however, is usually only involved in very general decisions.

[Simon02]

I agree with "Karl" !
Besides that, in Switzerland you speak swiss-german and not the german as we all know it ! The german language uses much more adjectives and nouns than swiss-german.
The german language can be kind of hard to translate from english into german on 1:1 !

[thomas]

Daer Simon

First of all the Swiss german is a spoken langugae but in School we learn th "good" german. Even our national hymne is in "good" german and not in Swiss German. I agree with you that it is quite difficult to translate not only Swiss German but also german 1:1 in germany. I wrote only because one has translated board of industries and that is wrong, he was in the board of different comoanies.

thomas

[observer]

SUPERVISORY boards

You are perfectly correct, I goofed on that one.

Advisory Board is rather Beirat I guess.

Concernig most literal vs. best translations:
It practically never happens in Germany that supervisory mandates of indiviuals only comprise chairman positions. Thus, an individual customarily can only be chairman of some of the supervisory boards he belongs to.
Furthermore die Industrie is a common pars pro toto expression for the collective whole of all industrial firms (like die Wirtschaft signifies the collective whole of all commercial activity), not customary in English though, were "the industry" rather denotes a particular industry (e.g. chemical industry). To differentiate with regard to a particular industry (singular) it makes sense to translate it with a plural therefore...

Concerning differences in corporate governance:
Aufsichtsrat means the board of non-executive directors, while the chairman of the board must not be identical with the CEO (Vorstandsvorsitzender) of the same firm in Germany. The way that is usually handled is that the CEO of firm 1 is also chairman of the board in firm 2 (the concurrence of chairman and CEO positions in that respect is similarly high), while theoretically there is no requirement to be CEO elsewhere to chair a board.

The principle of Weiss belonging to other supervisory boards here is that the 2nd level ( Generalbevollmächtigter) below the executive board of Flick was "planted" into other supervisory boards to sort of exert influence there (not uncommon to what large banks do today in a very similar fashion)

Agree Karl ? (gee, we should start a translation bureau together, what do you mean...? )

[Researcher]

OK guys, I think I've got the general idea now
Thank you
Researcher