EU translations 3/EU-Übersetzungen 3

I see that Richard Schneider at uepo.de calls the Saarbrücker Zeitung report a Falschmeldung – an incorrect report. He also enjoys himself making a dig at ‘blogs’, presumably mine.

Falschmeldungen haben ein langes Leben

Erfahrungsgemäß lassen sich von den Medien verbreitete verzerrte Darstellungen und Fehlinterpretationen nur sehr schwer wieder aus der Welt schaffen. Man wird sicherlich auch in zehn Jahren noch Artikel lesen können, in denen fälschlich behauptet wird, der Deutsche Bundestag habe 2012 die schlechte Qualität der EU-Übersetzungen bemängelt.

Deshalb sollte man zumindest auf den Websites der Übersetzungsbranche darauf achten, den Sachverhalt korrekt darzustellen. So kann jeder, der künftig zu dem Thema recherchiert, auch die wahrheitsgemäße Darstellung finden.

Just to clarify this point: it was discussed on a translators’ mailing list yesterday and that is why I wrote this at the end of my second post:

On another point: there are two grounds of complaint by the Bundestag: one, where documents are not available in German at all – here’s a German article on that from 2008 – and the other, where they are badly translated. It’s the latter we are discussing.

Here’s the original Bundestag announcement.

Someone pointed out that this could be taken to mean that the Bundestag was complaining about the lack of German versions – which is a serious problem, but a different problem. However, one colleague contacted the journalists on the Saarbrücker Zeitung and they confirmed that Bundestag members had complained about the quality of the translations.

LATER NOTE: This matter is apparently being discussed in the BDÜ translators group on Xing, and Richard Schneider is involved in that discussion, and has also been discussed on Facebook, I gather.

7 thoughts on “EU translations 3/EU-Übersetzungen 3

    • Well, apparently one of the translators on the pt list thought the SZ article might be a canard (Ente!) and did some phoning around and found out that, yes, Bundestag members had criticized quality, although admittedly the official Bundestag announcement doesn’t actually say that. It looks as if uepo did not do any phoning around. Journalism schmournalism.

      • And now I see exactly what uepo had feared: false information being spread on Twitter claiming that it’s only a matter of missing translations.

        I do wonder if there is a hidden agenda here. I know that in the past there have been a lot of dirty dealings with the EU contracts. One service provider still apparently laughs openly about how with a bit of bribery they were able to enter a tender for which they were unqualified, get the contract and then turn around and offer to subcontract to their competitors on the bid because they lacked the infrastructure to deliver. EU language services are synonymous with many things. Quality is not one of them.

        • This post is from June 2012 and all the information I had is here and in the comments. I haven’t found anything else out since.

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