How would you translate this? It is about the new trends in railway
station architecture, and the word that is causing me headaches is
"Marken-Brand". What is the writer trying to say?
"Die neue Stationen stärken somit nicht das bestehende Image der SBB,
sondern sind Ausdruck einer tiefgreifenden und durchaus fragwürdigen
Veränderung, von der alten Bahnhof-Identität hin zum ausschliesslichen
Marken-Brand."

Dear leander1,

The strange expression "Marken-Brand" is without any doubt an exemplar
for a linguistic trend in all German-speaking countries, and though it
is most distinctive in Germany, Switzerland is not spared from it: The
sometimes erroneous adoption of English and English-sounding words.
For example, a cellphone has the pseudo-English name "Handy", and a TV
show host is a "Showmaster", to mention only two examples. I admit,
those two are exceptionally horrible; most terms are adopted
correctly. Nevertheless, the excessive adoption of Anglicisms has
become more and more controversial in the past few years since the
newly adopted terms do not only not facilitate communication with
speakers of the English language, since they are often used in a sense
different from the original meaning; they are also used to previous
German terms just because they sound "cooler" or more professional.

In this particular case, the combination "Marken-Brand" is quite
funny. "Marke" is German for "brand". And the second part of the
combined term is, without any doubt, the English "brand". There is a
German word "Brand", which means "fire"; but it is clear that the
author did not have it in mind here since it would not make any sense.
(By the way, the German "Brand" and the English "brand" are distant
cousins, since the expression originally derived from the custom of
branding livestock). So "Marken-Brand" basically means "brand-brand".

Reading the paragraph, I would say that the author tried to give his
text a certain "modern-dynamic-professional" feeling by using this
interesting creation, regardless of the fact that it is actually
saying twice the same. Through the context, I can say for sure that
"Marken-Brand" is meant to express "brand building", in the sense of
"to disperse its corporate identity". So the paragraph would translate
as follows:

"Thus, the new train stations do not strengthen the existing image of
the SBB [Swiss Federal Railways], but they rather express a drastic
and by all means questionable change, away from the old
station-identity to sole brand building."


I hope this was helpful.
Best regards,
Scriptor

Many thanks!