Özil

There are priorities in Fürth.

Meanwhile, there’s a story at fucked translation of a ‘bad pass’ by Özil reaching Spanish as a ‘fake passport’.

Here’s the source, at Malaprensa:

En la noticia de Bild, que es simplemente un comentario al partido con Inglaterra, Hiddink dice:

Guus Hiddink (türkischer Nationaltrainer): „Schade, dass Özil sich für den falschen Pass entschieden hat. Er ist ein moderner Fußballspieler, den ich in meinem Team gut gebrauchen könnte.

Que traducido por Google translator, es:

Guus Hiddink ( entrenador del equipo turco nacional): ” Lástima que Özil eligió el paso equivocado. Él es un futbolista moderno , bien podría utilizar en mi equipo.

Actually, since Bild was avoiding anglicisms – if not particularly on that date – it wasn’t a bad pass, nor a fake passport, but the wrong passport – if Özil had chosen the Turkish passport, he would have been in Hiddink’s Turkish team.

LATER NOTE: I see the story has got further. In fact, Google has a mass of links on the ‘Özil fake passport claim scandal’.

Football support/Fußball 2

Yesterday BILD claimed it was appearing without any English words. I can’t confirm this. I do wish commentators would pronounce ‘Stephen Gerrard’ with emphasis on the first syllable of his surname.

How to pronounce Steven Gerrard.

I found another call for avoiding anglicisms from a publication called Deutsche Sprachwelt in Erlangen:

Anläßlich des WM-Achtelfinalspiels zwischen Deutschland und England am Sonntag ruft die DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT ganz Deutschland dazu auf, während des gesamten Wochenendes entschlossen auf Anglizismen und englischsprachige Lieder zu verzichten. „Setzen wir ein Zeichen, daß Deutschland hinter der deutschen Mannschaft und hinter der deutschen Sprache steht!“, forderte der Chefredakteur der Sprachzeitung, Thomas Paulwitz.

Instead of public viewing (which I did see in an advert in BILD), Rudelgucken should be used. Ferrero and kicker have produced an album containing words like goal, facts, and Team-Sticker.

Meanwhile, the Apotheken are inspired:

The adidas slogan Impossible is nothing also deserves consideration – it is claimed to mean something different from Nothing is impossible.

Wool shop:

(Thanks to Chris Irwin for the Zeit reference to avoiding German in BILD)

English language/Die englische Sprache

Back to a topic we seem to have forgoten too soon: Lena singing Satellite.

When I first heard the song, I didn’t like the lyrics. I realize the music is quite catchy, Lena apparently sings it faster than the writers intended, she dances well, at least in the video, she doesn’t dress up in a bizarre evening costume or strip off in the middle. But the lyrics are old-fashioned in concept, with an attempt to make them sound fun, I suppose, by additions like ‘I painted my toenails for you’.

I don’t mean to knock Lena, I just thing the song could have been better.

But other people don’t like the song lyrics either. Then again, I suddenly realized that many commentators simply don’t understand the English!

One ‘Tusnelda’ offers a critique plus ‘translation’. Tusnelda übersetzt: Heute, Satellite von Lena!

Der Text auf Deutsch:

Ich ging überall für dich hin,(und???)
ich habe mir sogar die Haare für dich gemacht. (toll, sollte man das nicht immer machen?)
Ich habe neue Unterwäsche gekauft, in blau, (wo denn??)
und ich trug sie gleich am nächsten Tag. (klar, die wäscht man ja auch vorher!!)

Tusnelda, this is all well and good, but ‘the other day’ means ‘a few days ago’, not ‘on the next day’. Incidentally, ‘underwear dyed blue’ seems to have escaped everyone.

‘Love, I’ve got it bad for you’ does not mean ‘Liebster, es steht schlecht für dich’ but ‘Liebster, ich bin in dich verknallt’. ‘My aim is true’ means ‘genau’ – I always hit the target.

Incidentally, Thusnelda or Tussi is used pejoratively in German. Whether this has anything to do with the historical Thusnelda I don’t know. She was apparently the wife of Arminius (Hermann of the battle of the Teutoburger Forest), was taken captive to Rome, gave birth to their son Thumelicus there – he is thought to have died as a gladiator in his teens.

Value added tax/VAT ohne Bindestrich

I discovered only recently that the most authoritative places write value added tax, not value-added tax.

This goes against the normal rule that compound adjectives of this construction take a hyphen.

To quote this discussion:

Surely it should be value added tax, no hyphen, not value-added tax? See, for example: (1) (http://www.hmce.gov.uk/business/vat/vat.htm), (2) (http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=31977L0388&model=guichett), (3) (http://www.rd.go.th/publish/6043.0.html) — ALoan 00:48, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

According to the traditional rules pertaining to hyphens there should be a hyphen. But the traditional rules, still used in newspapers and magazines, and in many novels, are no longer used by advertising copy writiers nor by those who write labels on packages, nor by lots of educated English-speaking people. But I think its a good idea to follow the newspaper-and-magazine usage, for reasons that are explained in the article titled hyphen. Michael Hardy 21:39, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the traditional rules would indicate that a hyphen should be used; unfortunately, until the Sixth Directive, the Value Added Tax Act 1994 and sundry other legislation is amended, the name of the tax in the EU in general and the UK in particular (however technically incorrect) is actually “value added tax” and not “value-added tax”. — ALoan (Talk) 01:52, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just saying.

Fürth and the red card/Rote Karte und Fürth

The local paper says that a man born in Fürth invented the red card.

It seems to be partly true. Wikipedia (German) has the referee Rudolf Kreitlein born both in Stuttgart and Fürth, Wikipedia (English) only in Stuttgart. But he was apparently born in Fürth and went to Stuttgart after 1945.

Rudolf Kreitlein was born in Fürth in 1919 and is still alive. Here is a picture of him last year (the one on the right!).

He was the referee of the England-Argentina game in the World Cup 1966 quarter-final.

According to this account (in German) at rp online, Kreitlein ordered the Argentine captain Antonio Rattin to leave the field. There was an uproar, and only after ten minutes did Rattin go, escorted by police. Kreitlein also had to escorted by police after the game.

On the coach back to the hotel, Kreitlein and Ken Aston, or Ken Aston alone, devised the yellow and red card scheme so players were not confused as to what had been ordered. From the Wikipedia entry on Ken Aston:

On the trip, punctuated by many traffic lights, Aston realised that a colour coding scheme on the same amber (steady) – red (stop) principle as used on traffic lights would traverse language barriers and clarify to players and spectators that they had been cautioned or sent off. Thus was devised the system whereby referees show a yellow card for a caution and a red card for an expulsion, which was first used in the 1970 World Cup.

From rp-online:

Auf der Rückfahrt vom Stadion ins Hotel kam Kreitlein und dem englischen Schiedsrichter-Betreuer Ken Aston eine historische Idee: Inspiriert von den zahlreichen roten Verkehrsampeln entwickelten sie “gelbe” und “rote” Karten als weltweit verständliche und eindeutige Symbole. Der Weltverband FIFA nahm den Vorschlag auf und führte die Karten bei der WM 1970 ein. Die erste Rote Karte bei einer WM sah aber erst 1974 der Chilene Caszely im Spiel gegen Deutschland.

BP prepares for hydrogen/BP und Wasserstoffantrieb


View Larger Map

I always wondered why BP on the Southend Arterial Road was preparing to help cars run on hydrogen (or have I got it wrong?) – see the small windmill-like device, of which there are two.

LATER NOTE: I gather these are very small wind generators. Here’s a PDF with some more pictures. Proven Energy seems to be the company providing these devices for BP and Shell.

Nick Clegg speaking foreign/Westerwelle beeindruckt

I linked earlier to a clip of Nick Clegg speaking Dutch.

Recently the Guardian had an article about all the foreign languages he claims to speak.

His Spanish apparently had its limits:

Trouble came later at question time. Sitting without earphones on – and so without access to the translators – he showed good comprehension but occasionally struggled to understand the precise wording of questions. Clegg himself admitted that his unrehearsed Spanish – despite the practice he gets on frequent trips to his wife’s family home in Olmedo, Valladolid, north-west of Madrid – might not be perfect.

Clegg also spoke German in Berlin. As berlin brief put it:

In the press conference following the meeting on 10 June 2010, the LibDem leader Nick Clegg surprised journalists with his fluent German, raving about the “Berliner Luft” (”Berlin air”).

“I’d like the English journalists to know … his German is excellent”, Foreign Minister Westerwelle commented, the Guardian newspaper reported, perhaps alluding to the generally poor language abilities of English journalists, and to Coomarasamy insisting on framing his questions in English in the press conference in Berlin last year.

Possibly his fluent Dutch helps with the German. But I think we need to hear him. Westerwelle is bound to make a remark to British journalists in view of his record.

LATER NOTE: Kalebeul in more detail and with a video on Clegg’s Spanish.

Thanks to our Spanish correspondent, who will be reporting on Clegg’s Catalonian.

Denglish in football/Fußballausdrücke

It really doesn’t matter how many false or genuine anglicisms German contains, or how many peculiar terms a German may use when speaking English, as long as the terms are comprehensible.

But when it comes to international football, it’s probably safer to use the terms usual in English.

Collected from various sources:

Greenkeeper groundsman
Relegation play-off
Weltmeisterschaft World Championship World Cup (but we do call the winners the world champions!)
Tackling tackle
Dribbling dribble
Trainer manager/coach

Stuart Dykes, Working Languages, False friends, good and bad translation, Denglisch, Tipps für Übersetzer

Meanwhile, Vertigo has a quote from the translation of Peter Handke’s Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) – the translation is by Michael Roloff, incidentally.

“The goalkeeper is trying to figure out which corner the kicker will send the ball into,” Bloch said. “If he knows the kicker, he knows which corner he usually goes for. But maybe the kicker is also counting on the goalie’s figuring this out. So the goalie goes on figuring that just today the ball might go into the other corner. But what if the kicker follows the goalkeeper’s thinking and plans to shoot into the usual corner after all? And so on, and so on.”