The Unwort des Jahres is chosen by an independant organisation consisting of 4 permanent jury members with linguistic qualifications as well as two guest jurists. This year's Unwort des Jahres is "Entlassungsproduktivität" which could possibly be translated as "redundancy productivity".
QUOTE
Dieses Wort meint eine gleich bleibende, wenn nicht gar gesteigerte Arbeits- und Produktionsleistung, nachdem zuvor zahlreiche für „überflüssig“ gehaltene Mitarbeiter entlassen wurden. Es verschleiert damit die meist übermäßige Mehrbelastung derjenigen, die ihren Arbeitsplatz noch behalten konnten, was oft auch mit dem ebenfalls beschönigenden Wort von der „Arbeitsverdichtung“ umschrieben wird. Aber auch die volkswirtschaftlich schädlichen Folgen der personellen Einsparung, die Finanzierung der Arbeitslosigkeit, werden mit diesem Terminus schamhaft verschwiegen.
Which very roughly translates as:
This word signifies a stability or increase in productivity after workers considered surplus to requirements were made redundant. It hides the fact that this is due to all the extra workload that the remaining workers must bear, which is often termed as "Arbeitsverdichtung" (increasing task density???). But also the damage to the economy, the financing of the unemployed, is shamefully neglected with the use of this word.
The runners up were
2) Ehrenmord: Honour murder, typically when male member of an immigrant family murder their own sister/daughter because she damaged the "Familienehre" (family honour) by going out with a member of a different religion or not agreeing to marry the groom chosen for her by her own family.
3) Bombenholocaust: How the NPD referred to the allied bombing of Dresden (1945) in the state parliament of Saxony.
4) Langlebigkeitsrisiko: From the private insurance industry.
As well, the Düsseldorf Börse announced "Heuschrecken" to be the Börsen-Unwort 2005. It basically means locusts, and was used by Franz Munterfering (SPD) to refer to the hedge fund investors who were buying up German companies. It went down well with core SPD voters, but not the international business community
More information is available here. The 2005 Unwörter are announced and explained under "Pressemeldungen".
You can also read all the previous Unwörter from 1991 to 2004. It's surprising how many different terms to describe redundancy have been found and made their way into the lists throughout the years. There are also some unusual words, such as "Organspende" or "Outsourcing", which either look totally harmless or have become an accepted part of the vocabulary.
