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Several years ago I worked in Germany and discussed a phrase in German which doesn't really translate to English well.

Basically, the phrase was something like, "things will always go wrong during a demonstration" - but I cannot remember it. It was also considerably more elegant.

enderland
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1 Answers1

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I'm not sure I ever heard a complete saying about this, but usually Germans will make a reference to the "Vorführeffekt" in a situation like this.
It pretty literally translates to *"demo effect" and means just that: that demonstrations in themselves have a tendency to go wrong.

Note that this also includes demonstrations of negative things, i.e. trying to reproduce an error when your IT person is watching. This may well be the commonest situation when people use the term.

Mac
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  • Yes! I think this is what I was remembering. – enderland Oct 15 '13 at 14:56
  • Or even shorter: Demoeffekt. – divby0 Oct 15 '13 at 15:12
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    @divby0 Is Demoeffekt even a german word? I never heard that before. – Timbo Oct 15 '13 at 15:53
  • @Timbo Even if it's not in dictionary, Demo is a word and Effekt is a word, and so is Demoeffekt a valid German word. If it makes sense or if you need this word at all, is a different question. – Em1 Oct 15 '13 at 17:26
  • @Timbo, the first time I heard it was in Zürich, admittedly in an environment full of American expats. – divby0 Oct 15 '13 at 19:15
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    @divby0 Why bring up a made-up word if there is one (Vorführeffekt) that's well understood and very common in German? – Thorsten Dittmar Oct 16 '13 at 09:36
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    One could add that because the formation of the Word Vorführeffekt is analoguous to scientifically proven physical effects like e.g. the "Hall effect" it gives the impression that it is a fundamental law of nature, so it's bound to happen. – fifaltra Jan 01 '14 at 20:21