Translation blogs and links/Übersetzungsblogs und -links

I added two translation weblogs to my blogroll. I actually follow more in Google Reader. And it’s time I weeded some dead ones out.

The first new one is Patenttranslator’s Blog, by Steve Vitek (of FLEFO on CompuServe in the old days). Steve is originally from Czechoslovakia, as it then was, spent some time in Japan but has long been in the USA, for a long time in California and now in Virginia.

The second blog is MA Translation Studies News, which calls itself ‘A blog for students and graduates of the MA Translation Studies at the University of Portsmouth’. It looks interesting. I liked the entry on a dispute about how Michael Hofmann translated a Gottfried Benn poem.

Linguatools has context dictionaries between German and several other languages. I tried this, and Linguee, and MyMemory, with my word of the day, Gestaltungsspielraum, and they were all more useful than they used to be. But look at the sources! The big advantage of Linguee is giving precise URLs, and it now does it immediately beside the quote. MyMemory has only europa.eu, which I suppose is the DGT CAT database that anyone can download, and Anonymous! And Linguatools has only vague terms like Parlamentsdebatte – presumably another of those widely available databases – and in one instance Zeitungskommentar.

Here is a curious feature of Linguatools: it gives me synonyms for the source term, not the target term – actually, this could be quite useful:

Gestaltungsspielraum : freedom
wird noch übersetzt mit: Freiheit, Freiraum, Ungebundenheit, Ungezwungenheit
Gestaltungsspielraum : leeway
wird noch übersetzt mit: Abdrift, Abtrift, Rückstand, Spielraum
Gestaltungsspielraum : sphere of influence
wird noch übersetzt mit: Interessensphäre, Machtbereich

7 thoughts on “Translation blogs and links/Übersetzungsblogs und -links

    • I meant the translation memory that the EU translation department makes available containing the acquis communautaire – I must have blogged about it but forgotten exactly what it’s called!

  1. Synonyms are also given by Linguee. Look at the “auch” or “also” behind the source term in the result list.

  2. FWIW: While a German Fideikommiss undoubtedly served the same purpose as the entail and might be a fitting translation in a novel or play, there are some differences:

    As far as I know, a Fideikommiss was an entity of its own, similar to a foundation: it not only limited the ability of the “holder” to assign the property mortis causa, but in effect disenfranchised him and made him a mere beneficiary of the proceeds. There was also a considerable governmental involvement by special Fideikommissbeh

    • I’m still recovering from the 2012 Christmas special. The casting is great, isn’t it? It gets a bit soap-opera-y but much better than the Hotel Adlon…

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