Translating and interpreting

Sight translation has a German name that puts a spelling rule on display: das Vom-Blatt-Übersetzen. It starts life as a verb phrase, vom Blatt übersetzen, to translate from the sheet, and as a verb phrase it is written as three separate words in small letters, apart from the noun Blatt. Turn the whole phrase into a noun and German joins every part with hyphens. The first word takes a capital because it now opens a noun, the infinitive at the end takes one because it has become that noun, and any noun inside keeps its own; everything else stays small, as in das Auf-die-lange-Bank-Schieben, the habit of putting things off. The result is neuter, like every infinitive used as a noun, and it has no plural. English leaves such a phrase as it stands. German has to decide where the word begins and ends, and the hyphens are that decision written down.