Ist die deutsche Übersetzung wohl zu komprimiert?

... oder das englische Original zu umständlich? :)

German translation seems good to me.

The English might seem wordy or long-winded but in German the two words "seiner Urlaubsvertretung" translate no less than fifteen English words! "for the person who would be filling in for him while he was on leave".

I believe my English sentence is natural-sounding and can't see what word(s) could be left out to convey the same meaning.

>>> the two words "seiner Urlaubsvertretung" translate no less than fifteen English words
...
with only two of them not being monosyllabic. That's remarkable enough. And this, I guess, is what makes the English sentence, as you stated, natural-sounding nevertheless.

This demonstrates perfectly the awesome qualities of German noun agglutination, I suppose!
(While Russian happens to be in the middle here, since we've got a word for 'one filling in for someone else', but 'on leave' has to be expressed separately. :)

I wonder if there are cool stats about how languages rank on average word length. English will have to be on the shorter end of the scale, while German indubitably on the longer end. It's interesting that verbal participles seem to be adding a lot to that stat in Russian, since you'd commonly have 6-7 syllables in them.

Would it also be possible to say:
"for the person who would do his job during his absence"
or
"for his vacation substitute"
?

Ein interessanter Artikel:
"Andere Sprachen sind viel effizienter als Deutsch" (Eine impertinente Behauptung!)
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft...s-Deutsch.html

Japanisch – die Sprache der Zukunft. Ich habe es immer gewußt! ☺

Dennoch hoffe ich, die Japaner (über)setzen in Zukunft auch auf Esperanto. ☺

>Would it also be possible to say:
>"for the person who would do his job during his absence"
>or
>"for his vacation substitute"

Both are possible but I would be less likely to use the second one.