Adaptation of the entire magazine for the German-speaking market (May 2010 to February 2017)
Every month for a total of seven years, I translated the famous Men's Fitness into German. Comprising 140 pages apiece, they covered a wide range of topics including:
- fitness training, HIIT, sprint training, tabata, weightlifting, full-body training, functional training, split training, weight-loss programmes, muscle-building programmes, bodybuilding, strongman, crossfit
- endurance sport, road cycling and mountain biking, triathlon, marathon, ultra-marathon, trail running, long-distance running, swimming, athletics
- football, basketball, American football, rugby
- downhill skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, ice hockey
- outdoor, adventure and extreme sports
- mountaineering, climbing, bouldering, ice climbing, extreme climbing
- health, nutrition, recipes for muscle building and weight loss, sports medicine and sports science
- sports equipment: shoes, bikes, fitness watches, dumbbells and barbells, sports supplies, etc.
- yoga, meditation, mental training
- martial arts and combat sports: boxing, wrestling, karate, taekwondo, muay Thai, kung-fu, judo, jiu-jitsu, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, MMA
- motorsport
- active holidays
MF considered these topics in reader-friendly, succinct, fresh and candid interviews, news articles, tests and reports along with reports, features and profiles. There were contributions from successful international athletes as well as active world champions and title holders, leading sports scientists and top trainers. The MF editors were also always very keen to test their own boundaries in ultra-marathons and training sessions with the pros.
Adaptation required me to separate the wheat from the chaff. I had absolute freedom and was trusted by the editorial team to step in as copy editor where required to omit entire paragraphs and adapt texts to the German market as necessary if I believed they might otherwise fail to appeal to the intended audience.
The language had to be tailored to the subject, text type, interviewee, quote, editor or specialist to make everything 100 per cent idiomatic and natural for readers. Under no circumstances should anything sound conceited or overly complicated, nor too superficial or chummy. A bit like having an experienced top trainer at your side to push and motivate you in easily comprehensible German so that you can achieve your best!
The magazine has since evolved and become so well-established in the German-speaking market that the content is now written directly in German – the ultimate dream of every successful format and a fantastic success story.
