How do you translate a recursive acronym?
I started my page intentionally in German and named it Idee , english Idea , which is the recursive acronym for Idee der eigenen Erkenntnis . Easy to see, the four words, if abbreviated by their respective first letter, read Idee , which is also the first of the four words.
Now I have to face the fact, that some articles might be written in English. If I do this, the header of the website should also be in English. But I can't translate simply every word into English, because then the result is no longer a recursive acronym.
How do you translate a recursive acronym? Recursive acronyms are also called by some bacronym or backronym, a questionable language invention.
I tried it, but I cannot get any meaningful long-text out of the abbreviation Idea , which would come near to the meaning it should have.
It took me quite a while to figure out, what the name of the English version would be. It is Concept .
Concept of new cognition elicitation personally thinking , which translates back into German as Konzept der neuen Erkenntnisgewinnung durch persönliches Denken .
As you can see, the translation back into German doesn't literate back into a recursive acronym as well. Recursive acronyms do not translate very well. But if a recursive acronym is not translated into a recursive acronym, then the translation is wrong.
I'm quite happy with the translation found. Depending on the context Idee translates well into Concept instead of Idea , and the long form of the abbreviation Concept contains the meaning of the long form of the abbreviation Idee .
I'm aware, that the English version might not sound very usual, but this is also the case for the German version. Do you have a better translation? Please let me know.