Forsch is another word from my gig translating blurbs for a film-making company. It has nothing to do with forschen (to research); no, forsch comes directly from the French force and so its meaning is closer to the identical English word than to the Mittel Hochdeutsch roots of forschen.
Forsch is a classic case of the flexible use of German. So frequently I find that about five English words map onto a single one from the German; recently I tried and failed to discover if English actually had more words than German. That’s what my experience is, but then again German is so rich in compound words, depending on how you count them, the vocabulary is enorm.
Back to forsch. Some dictionaries, including the Google mega-engine and my 20-year-old PONS, translate it as “bold,” “brash,” or “brisk,” which is nice, right? A powerful, rousing word. Then I stumbled on the concept of a “forsche Frau” and things got a little lurid. Commonly used in dating-site editorials and the online equivalents of “Cosmopolitan” magazine (which I somehow avoided while living in Germany), eine forsche Frau is either “forward” or “assertive,” depending on whether you’re throwing shade on someone or boosting their jets. In the online forums and article I skimmed, forsch has a negative flavor to it in terms of dating behavior, verging on “pushy.” There was a whiff of “keeping a woman in her place.” In this context, I’d translate forsch as “forward” because it has a negative, conservative-traditional connotation, whereas “assertive” means “capable of negotiating a fair raise,” which is, well, awesome. There are plenty of examples of this usage, too, and, of course, men can be forsch. It just gets a titch dicey in certain conversations.
In sum, I’m a little unsure about where I’m going to use forsch. Maybe when describing the color, the act, the magnitude–the everything–of graffiti tags? Just be forewarned, if describing a woman as forsch to their face, their language might just get a little colorful with you.
