Foreword vs Preface in German

Question

In the English language, Foreword and Preface are different in meaning, and books frequently have both of those:

Foreword: another author endorses the book,
Preface: the author(s) tell how they came to write the book.

However, I am not sure how to make this distinction in German. The Vorwort seems to me to be more of a preface than a foreword.

How would these two different words be translated when they occur at the beginning of a book?

The distinction that you make between the English words "foreword" and "preface" is not correct. "Foreword" is not necessarily the work of another author. The two words are synonyms; the difference is that "preface" is a Latin loanword and "foreword" is a so-called "Saxonism", an artificial Englishing of a foreign word. — fdb, Feb 23 '17 at 19:51
@fdb I added a link to an editor's explanation of the distinction who also cites the Chicago Manual of Style. Wikipedia agrees as well: "typically written by s/o else...". So while not strictly necessarily, the distinction generally holds in current professional use of English. — Felix Dombek, Feb 23 '17 at 20:25
The linked article by the non-fiction editor does say “Different publishers and editors may define these elements of the front end of books differently”. I tend to have fairly similar expectations of a preface or foreword and assume they are worth reading before I get to the main text, whereas I am reluctant to read an introduction to a novel before the novel itself; with non-fiction I read an introduction beforehand too. In a novel a foreword is often and a preface sometimes a framing device and thus part of the work, while an introduction tends to be a commentary. Some statistics would help! — PJTraill, Feb 23 '17 at 23:35
@DevSolar Einleitung is Introduction and usually refers to the introductory part of the main body of the book -- not something “before“ the first chapter. So it's completely different — Felix Dombek, Feb 24 '17 at 19:16

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 24 '17 at 05:36

Both are called »Vorwort« in German. When a book has both a foreword and a preface, then the preface is often called

Vorwort des Autors

Sometimes you also find

Geleitwort

when it is a foreword.

Here is an example, the German translation of the 6^th edition of Design Patterns by Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. In this book we have at the beginning, before chapter 1 (which is »1 Einführung«):

Vorwort des Übersetzers der 6ten Auflage
^{(Foreword by the translator of the 6th edition)}
Vorwort des Übersetzers
^{(Foreword by the translator)}
Vorwort
^(Preface)
Geleitwort von Grady Booch
^{(Foreword by Grady Booch)}
Leitfaden für den Leser
^{(Reader's guide)}
1 Einführung
^{(1 Introduction)}

Foreword vs Preface in German

1 Answers1