This sounds odd in English. Perhaps this would sound more natural:

"This house has gathered dust for who knows how many years."

Hello cueyayotl. While your sentence offering certainly flows well,it does not reflect the use of the relative clause in the German sentence. The latter used em-dashes to separate this clause. While I cannot read the other language, I note ALL the translations use em-dashes. Only yours does not.

My sentence reflects the German form and meaning from which it was translated. I used two em-dashes to separate out what English refers to as a non-restrictive clause (also called a non-essential, modifying, adjective, or parenthetical clause). As you will recall, the nature of a non-restrictive clause is that it provides additional, but non-essential information that can be removed from the sentence without changing the fundamental idea of the underlying sentence, here, "This house has collected dust." The non-restrictive clause in my sentence, "Who knows for how many years." contains exactly those ideas which the original German sentence also separated from the main clause -- in the same way.

My non-restrictive clause, you must concede, is rendered in classic English subject--verb word order The additional noun. "years," being neither the the object of the verb nor an indirect object, appears in the wholly traditional form of a trailing prepositional phrase. Nothing could be more conventional.

It may be that you object to using a non-restrictive clause in this sentence, and, again, I find no flaw in your offering, which avoids that usage. However, I translated the German sentence that existed. I was not free to create my own. Since the original contained a relative clause, I created one in English as well, In doing so I successfully convened both the meaning and "feel" of the German.

Truth be told, my sentence offends no part of English syntax, grammar or convention. There is no sense in which it is "odd," especially because the em-dash serves so strongly to separate the non-restrictive clause, as a separate idea from the main clause. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

I suggest you also consider the relative clause and its proper and approved usage, both with "who" and "whose," and that this usage is wholly normal and conventional.

https://www.thoughtco.com/restr...lauses-1689689

As a translator I can tell you that you don't need the ''feel of the German'' in an English sentence.

Oder in den Worten Schillers: #1780522. Er war auch Übersetzer, und dies ist genau das, was wir wollen. ☺

Hello Dejo,

I'm not a translator, so I offer no opinion on your role. However, I teach English as a foreign language, and in that capacity have come I know a number of professional English German translators. They often pose questions to me about subtlety of meaning to be certain they convey the correct "feel," and sense of the English in order to translate correctly into German. It seems to make no difference if they are translating legal texts, cook books, or novels.

One of my favorite German expressions is, "Leave the church in the village." Since this has no meaning in English, I would feel remiss if I did not render a translation that carried the true meaning, as well as it's register, and import.

I don't translate for others, but I do for myself. I endeavor to improve my German every day. It's very important to me to know if neutral sounding words actually convey anger, patience, reluctance, enthusiasm, etc. Surely there is no error in endeavoring to translate both the literal meaning and the feeling that words convey.