English is my 2nd language. I studied German 40 years ago in college but retained almost nothing.

Why does the Goethe's classic "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" in German become "The Sorrows of Young Werther" in English? What happens to the "s" in "Werthers"? Don't laugh. This is a serious question from a Madarin speaking Chinese.

The joke was that the German version "Werthers" was translated into Chinese as "維特“ (loosely, Wei-ter) without the "s" and then translated into English as "Werther" with the "s" missing also.