Gail at Open Brackets has an entry on the exchanges between authors and their translators:

bq. So I’ve decided that, even if nobody else would want to read it, a collection of the correspondence between authors and their translators would make for a fine and fascinating book.

My eye was caught by a series of questions sent to Alan Bennett by the German translator of his possibly not immortal play ‘Kafkas Dick’ and contained in Bennett’s diaries:

bq. Q. Who is Nurse Cavell, a figure from a movie or a play? I think I know her, but I cannot remember from where.
A. You shot her

bq. Other questions:
‘For a long time I used to go to bed early.’ This Proust quote, where?
Ivy-Compton-Burnett: who or what is that?
Gas oven: do you mean the gas chamber of the Nazis or the kitchen stove which is used for suicide?
Altar: do you mean marriage or sacrifice?

I think the last two questions are OK, or at least the last one is, depending on the context. But the others seem to be ones a translator would research rather than ask the author, and the Proust one is the most famous Proust sentence of all.

So I asked myself: I wonder if I know this translator? Google helps out – the play was translated as ‘Kafkas Franz’ and the perpetrator was Max Goldt, who is rather well known as a writer in his own right, although I haven’t been able to get on with his stuff. Here is an article on Goldt from the Süddeutsche Zeitung:

bq. Zu Max-Goldt-Lesungen geht man mitunter wie zu einer besonders schicken Party. Lieber als an irgendwelchen Szenetreffpunkten würde der Dichter deshalb im Theater vorlesen – “aber das kommt wohl ohnehin irgendwann, wenn ich älter werde”. Fürs ganz reale Theater hat Max Goldt übrigens im Vorjahr das ziemlich anstößige Stück “Kafkas Dick” von Alan Bennett übersetzt, die deutschsprachige Erstaufführung wurde im Vorjahr irgendwo in Wien auf die Bretter gewuchtet. “Aber Theater fände ich eigentlich nur interessant”, sagt der Künstler wiederum ganz ohne Ironie, “wenn ich das Geschriebene selber spielen und inszenieren könnte. Ich würde das sicher besser auf die Bühne bringen als jeder Berufsregisseur oder Schauspieler.”

Goldt would only find theatre interesting if he could act and direct everything.

Via The Volokh Conspiracy: this site gives grades to flags of the world.

The top mark goes to The Gambia flag:

bq. Great design and colour choice. Also represents the geography of the country (without being a map).

Investigation elsewhere reveals that red represents the savanna grasslands, blue the River Gambia and green the country’s forests.

wood s lot has some links on (literary) translation.

Mots Pluriels:
TRANSLATED LIVES: AUTOBIOGRAPHY BETWEEN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES
TRADUIRE LE VECU : L’AUTOBIOGRAPHIE ENTRE LANGUES ET CULTURES (with some web links at the bottom of the page, mainly French but some English).

Alice Kaplan describes the horrific experience of having a novel translated by a translator convinced of his own godhood:

bq. I’ll call my translator, in the interests of privacy, “Mr. X.” Mr. X was hired by a French publisher to translate my book, French Lessons, an autobiographical essay about an American who falls in love with the French language.

It was a problem writing in French about an American’s experience of the French language, but it did not require quite the acrobatics of this man.

bq. Mr. X’s first response to the book was wild enthusiasm. He was excited to be doing his first literary translation. He fantasized an enormous commercial success for my book, and media stardom for me — thanks to him — complete with an appearance on Bernard Pivot’s literary talk show, with his expert coaching to prepare me. From these ambitious and enthusiastic beginnings, things went quickly downhill. In order for my book to achieve this status, Mr. X was convinced it needed serious adaptation. It would not work as it was for a French public. He therefore set out to rewrite it, according to his idea of the image a French reader would want to have of an American learning French.

This is followed by some examples of cases, including this one, where translators were taken to court. There is also some discussion of Kaplan’s own experiences as a translator.

I’ve uploaded another article by Geoffrey Perrin on DE>EN legal translation. It appeared in Lebende Sprachen in 1989.

There have been changes in the juvenile criminal law since then, but the basic contrast between the German and English systems is still valid. This is illustrated by diagrams. The article is folowed by a glossary. The glossary contains terms actually in use and also coinings, marked *: suggested translations rather than terms actually in use.

The article is a first-class illustration of the practical problems in collating terminology for a field.

Download file

Some of the points discussed:

In legal translation we are not comparing like with like, so the principles of terminology work cannot be fully adhered to – it’s better to use terms that are not identical, in order to avoid misconceptions.

Where do we take our language from – does it have to be one specific target legal system?

bq. One or two further observations on the approach I have adopted in compiling my list: in a number of instances, I have provided glosses or explanations in brackets – the translator will decide himself, of course, whether the circumstances call for them to be included, either by building them into the text he is producing, or in the form of footnotes. In some cases, I have not hesitated to use terms which are now obsolete as regards official use in Britain where I feel these are suitable for conveying a German concept (e.g. “misdemeanour” for “Verfehlung”). The soft sciences are particularly prone to rapid obsolescence in the terminological field, since they are precisely those spheres of life which are most at the mercy of the whims of governments as they come and go. If one were to reject a term simply because it ceased to be employed officially a year or two previously, the terminologist’s job would become even more difficult!

This reminds me of how many words have been changed in English law in recent years. I usually still use plaintiff, custody, access.

I have started using a script, closecomments.php, to block any comments on posts older than thirty days old. At least, if I run the script every day, that will be the case, and otherwise it may be 31 or 32 days.

The script came from tubedogg at geeksblog.

I did this because I get comment spam and also trolls, and often they use one or two particular entries. I suppose that particular URL has been handed on.

There’s one entry I would have liked to leave open, and that is Macroglossum Stellatarum, which may come to life again when the moths return. I suppose there is no way of opening a single comment?

Englische Urteile geben die Namen der Parteien an. Oft heißen die Fälle nach den Parteien. Deutsche Urteile geben die Namen nicht an. Manchmal fehlen auch die Namen der Richter und andere Personen- und Ortsnamen.

This is a piece of a judgment I’m supposed to be translating. Someone who did a summary of the case did at least know that ####### was D, or C, or British Virgin Islands. This time even the judges’ names are secret.

bq. Nach knapp 6-jährigen Ermittlungen im In- und Ausland mit mehr als 30 Durchsuchungsmaßnahmen bei Banken, Hauptvermittlern, Vermittlern und Anlegern sowie bei den Beklagten zu 2 und 3 in #######, nach insgesamt zehn Rechtshilfeersuchen an #######, #######, #######, ####### und ####### mit einem Fehlschlag der Rechtshilfebegehren an ####### und ####### – hat die Staatsanwaltschaft die Ermittlungen eingestellt, weil nicht mit der notwendigen Sicherheit der Nachweis geführt werden könne, dass der Beklagte zu 2 Gelder der Kapitalanleger zweckwidrig verwendet habe und dass der Beklagte zu 2 oder ausländische Gesellschafter der Beklagten zu 1 von vornherein beabsichtigt hätten, die von den Kapitalanlegern als Risikokapital zur Verfügung gestellten Gelder nicht ordnungsgemäß entsprechend den Prospektangaben in asiatischen Fonds und Firmenbeteiligungen anzulegen.