A typical translation problem on the pt mailing list yesterday: someone wanted to know what Ellenbeuge means. Four or five answered immediately: crook of the arm. He was still surprised it wasn’t in any of his dictionaries. No surprise: the word doesn’t exist – it should be Armbeuge.

We quite often have to deal with non-existent words in the original text.

A typical translation problem on the pt mailing list yesterday: someone wanted to know what Ellenbeuge means. Four or five answered immediately: crook of the arm. He was still surprised it wasn’t in any of his dictionaries. No surprise: the word doesn’t exist – it should be Armbeuge.

We quite often have to deal with non-existent words in the original text.

I was asked in a comment on the .. thread whether I would not normally have asked this in FLEFO, the CompuServe translators’ forum. The truth is that if I have a translation query I have to turn to somewhere where there is more than one person who might help. There are large numbers of mailing lists. Here is a question I posted on two mailing lists of networks of the British ITI (Institute of Translation and Interpreting):

bq. I am never happy with my rendering of schon deshalb. Can anyone suggest a good rendering? Here is an example:
Original:
An dieser Voraussetzung fehlt es hier schon deshalb, weil in dem Werbespot – insoweit vergleichbar einem Titelblatt – lediglich darauf aufmerksam gemacht wurde, daß sich die beworbene Zeitungsbeilage inhaltlich mit Marlene Dietrich als einer Person der Zeitgeschichte befaßt.

bq. Draft translation:
This requirement is not fulfilled in the present case if only because it was merely pointed out in the commercial that the newspaper supplement in question deals with Marlene Dietrich as a figure of contemporary history; here, it is similar to a title page. Continue reading →

I was asked in a comment on the .. thread whether I would not normally have asked this in FLEFO, the CompuServe translators’ forum. The truth is that if I have a translation query I have to turn to somewhere where there is more than one person who might help. There are large numbers of mailing lists. Here is a question I posted on two mailing lists of networks of the British ITI (Institute of Translation and Interpreting):

bq. I am never happy with my rendering of schon deshalb. Can anyone suggest a good rendering? Here is an example:
Original:
An dieser Voraussetzung fehlt es hier schon deshalb, weil in dem Werbespot – insoweit vergleichbar einem Titelblatt – lediglich darauf aufmerksam gemacht wurde, daß sich die beworbene Zeitungsbeilage inhaltlich mit Marlene Dietrich als einer Person der Zeitgeschichte befaßt.

bq. Draft translation:
This requirement is not fulfilled in the present case if only because it was merely pointed out in the commercial that the newspaper supplement in question deals with Marlene Dietrich as a figure of contemporary history; here, it is similar to a title page. Continue reading →

This is an entry from the weekend I am posting to see, again, whether posting causes the server to throw me out again.

It gives a concrete example of a search problem that was handled better by Alltheweb than Google and Vivisimo. Hence it is a bit longwinded.

I didn’t intend to write so much about search engines. But having started, I think I should give a few concrete examples of how a search engine helps when a particular problem comes up. This time, Alltheweb did the trick: it has clustering at the end of its results, something I’ve never noticed before. It also gives examples where the word is declined: I entered ideell, it also gives ideeller, albeit not at the top of the list.

Problem sentence:

bq. Die vermögenswerten Bestandteile des Persönlichkeitsrechts bestehen nach dem Tode des Rechtsträgers jedenfalls fort, solange die ideellen Interessen noch geschützt sind.

It’s actually the use of vermögenswert as an adjective rather than a noun I am wondering how to translate. It is contrasted with ideell, but when I try to put that into words I remember that ideeller Firmenwert (goodwill) is something you can put a figure on.

There are some times in translation when only a book will do. In my case that book is often the three-volume Deutsches Rechts-Lexikon. I also think of Markesinis on the German law of torts, and Palandt’s commentary on the Civil Code – but I haven’t got the latest edition of either. Continue reading →

This is an entry from the weekend I am posting to see, again, whether posting causes the server to throw me out again.

It gives a concrete example of a search problem that was handled better by Alltheweb than Google and Vivisimo. Hence it is a bit longwinded.

I didn’t intend to write so much about search engines. But having started, I think I should give a few concrete examples of how a search engine helps when a particular problem comes up. This time, Alltheweb did the trick: it has clustering at the end of its results, something I’ve never noticed before. It also gives examples where the word is declined: I entered ideell, it also gives ideeller, albeit not at the top of the list.

Problem sentence:

bq. Die vermögenswerten Bestandteile des Persönlichkeitsrechts bestehen nach dem Tode des Rechtsträgers jedenfalls fort, solange die ideellen Interessen noch geschützt sind.

It’s actually the use of vermögenswert as an adjective rather than a noun I am wondering how to translate. It is contrasted with ideell, but when I try to put that into words I remember that ideeller Firmenwert (goodwill) is something you can put a figure on.

There are some times in translation when only a book will do. In my case that book is often the three-volume Deutsches Rechts-Lexikon. I also think of Markesinis on the German law of torts, and Palandt’s commentary on the Civil Code – but I haven’t got the latest edition of either. Continue reading →