False friends ahoy! This one is a personal favorite. My two (professional) loves are translation and music production, and it’s not often they come together.

I was working with a (German) sound engineer, and speaking English with him. When I got to the studio, he excitedly told me, “I compromised the whole track”, and I thought to myself, “so why are you smiling?!”

There are two ways we can use “compromise”. Compromise, as in making concessions and striking a deal, is Kompromisse machen. Alternatively, compromised in the sense of having endangered or already damaged something, is gefährdet or beschädigt, depending on context. It hasn’t got a thing to do with Komprimieren.

Komprimieren = compress, please. Not just in sound engineering – everywhere. Verydefinitely including IT.  “The data has been compressed” and “the data has been compromised” are very very very different.

You can’t afford to make compromises when it comes to this!