I’m particularly struck by the idea of growing clematis in a small pot. I only saw that today. I’ve photographed the bonsai before.

I mentioned Mediadeck before. Now for the second year running a duck has raised a brood on the roof of this multi-storey car park in Hamburg. There’s a webcam (refreshed every 30 minutes). For more photos click on Biotop.

On the perennial topic of English borrowings in German, Renee Goodvin in the Living in Europe blogzine is interested in English words borrowed in German but given a different meaning.

Her example is Mobbing, which is certainly used a lot in Germany but I think does come from English.

bq. In German, “das Mobbing” translates to “workplace bullying,” which is what the woman on the tape was describing. However, the only time I ever use the word “Mob” in English as a noun is in reference to organized crime or a large group of dissatisfied or angry people. I also occasionally use “mob” as a verb as in “the crowd mobbed the store,” but in reference to workplace bullying? Never.

bq. I would really like to compile a list of English words with “invented” German meanings. If you have any examples, please email me at blondelibrarian (at) gmail.com.

Trying to think of words that fit what she means (if I understood her right), I found a Wikipedia entry on Scheinanglizismus. I had already remembered Pullunder, but this reminded me of Bodybag, which is used in Germany for those ‘handbags’ that are like a shrunk and mutated rucksack and hang close to the body. In English we tend to associate them with Vietnam. And there is a reminder of the ancient word Twen. Dressman and Handy too, of course.

I’m not sure that the article is fully reliable. Is Patchwork-Familie really invented? I seem to remember researching it when I first met it in German and finding some convincing English uses.

There’s a link to an article on invented English words in German by one Robbin D. Knapp, who may possibly be the author of the Wikipedia entry.

Artikel mit Links in Spiegel Online: Dow Jones lässt seit Januar einige Übersetzungen ins Deutsche in Budapest machen.

An article in Spiegel Online is causing concern to translators into German on at least two mailing lists. Alfa Press, a translation firm in Budapest, founded in late 2003, has since January been translating some financial news items for Dow Jones (in Eschborn) and now has a two-year contract. The typical translator is German, male and about thirty and has happened to find himself in Budapest.

There are six photos. One shows seven translators on four sides of an arrangement of computer tables. They are so cramped that they appear to have no room for reference works, although in another photo it looks as if one may have a glossary, which is lying at right angles between her and the keyboard. The room measures 24 m².

The job requires a one-paragraph news item to be done in under 15 minutes. Dow Jones looked in Romania and Serbia, which would have been cheaper, but it is paying more in Budapest, where there are a number of native German translators and German-speaking Hungarians.

It sounds as if the translators work almost a 12-hour day. In contrast, I’ve heard of people translating into German for the Financial Times Deutschland in shifts: a translator is paid for a shift whether or not translation work falls due, and in this way it’s guaranteed that there is someone available 24 hours a day.

Not only the prices (20% to 50% under those in Germany) are important, but the short notice period, between two weeks and four weeks. So these are not freelances (outsourcing often refers to giving work to freelances).

I think these must be examples (German).

bq. Die Sorge eines Berliners, das ZDF werde wegen der Hochzeit des dänischen Kronprinzen am 14.05.2004 die Sendungen «heute» und «Mittagsmagazin» nicht ausstrahlen, wird vom Verwaltungsgericht Mainz nicht geteilt. Dem Mann fehle es schon am Rechtschutzbedürfnis für seinen Eilantrag, den Sender zur Ausstrahlung der beiden Sendungen zu verpflichten, entschieden die Richter (Az.: 4 L 476/04.MZ). (beck-aktuell)

Not that this would interest many of my readers – well, hardly any, but not without clout … – but both the ARD (Erstes Programm) and the ZDF (Zweites Programm) are broadcasting the Danish royal wedding on Friday.

Udo Vetter in law blog (German) reports that a man in Berlin applied to the administrative court in Mainz to have the broadcast on ZDF stopped, because the news and a midday news magazine programme will be cancelled.

The court was not having this and said the ZDF is free to programme as it wants, apart from certain limits not relevant in the present case. There is a basic right of freedom of information, but this is not a right to a particular programme.

Udo speculates as to whether a private TV station is behind this application. He says it usefully highlights the question as to why these channels still have a right to the fees (fees paid by law for the provision ‘basic information’) even though their programmes are approaching tabloid quality.

(Original source beck-aktuell, German).

Delia Venables links to a group law blog by the University of East Anglia and Norwich Law School: Displacement of Concepts. Subtitle: Thoughts on technology, innovation, law, legal education, economics, cyberspace, intellectual property, and other things of interest to the humans inhabiting the information society, brought to you by a few folks at the University of East Anglia and the Norwich Law School