For years, Kemal E., an interpreter for Turkish in Berlin, worked for the Landeskriminalamt, the Berlin Office of Criminal Investigation. He wrote inflated invoices, and these were paid. In return, he gave the LKA presents, including lending them 24 computers. The case has now been in court for the past couple of days – the defendants are three interpreters and three police officers. Item with links to articles at geeklog, which is very interested in crime reports. The 53-year-old main mover and shaker is said to have been paid up to EUR 40,000 for proceedings he wasn’t even involved in.
The article in the Tagesspiegel, Die Gier des Übersetzers, joins in the current vogue of calling interpreters translators (although these people will have done both). Apparently there were a number of translators killed in Iraq – thus also the latest article from Richard Schneider, at Alexander von Obert’s Übersetzerportal. Richard Schneider also reports on the Berlin case. A number of articles are listed and linked there, but they do not have separate links. Start by clicking on Richards Nachrichtenportal (all German).
Makes a pleasant change to see the interpreter/translator ripping off and not being ripped off.
However – over to wordcounts – some trans. agencies have difficulty fathoming Germanic and Hungarian target-lingo compound-word counts and believe they are being hoodwinked.