Beim Übersetzerportal (Nachrichten) berichtet Richard Schneider von einer Untersuchung von Prof. Dr. Dieter Stein an der Uni Düsseldorf über englischsprachige Webauftritte deutscher Banken. (Usprünglich im Handelsblatt vom 3. Juni berichtet; über www.englisch-dolmetschen.de Artikel auch anderswoonline verfügbar.)

Prof. Dr. Dieter Stein, of Düsseldorf University, has investigated the English used in the websites of German banks. His conclusions, as reported by Richard Schneider of the Übersetzerportal from an article in Handelsblatt, are convincing, although he is German, but presumably he had native speakers in his team. Points criticized include obviously word-for-word renderings of the German and sentences that are too long and heavy and full of slightly outdated formal expressions. This is a great danger, since German texts tend to be a bit more formal than English ones, and translators may want, mistakenly, to preserve the style, or the client may insist on it. Richard Schneider comments on the problems of translating into a foreign language – especially this kind of text, I would add.

I agree with Richard Schneider that it’s probably a mistake on Professor Stein’s part to assume these texts were translated by secretaries.

The article can be found elsewhere online.

WestLB:

bq. Three mutually strengthening pillars underpin the business model pursued by WestLB which is an international commercial bank as well as a competence center for the savings banks and mid-sized companies. WestLB is hence a financial partner for major corporate clients and financial institutions, mid-sized corporates, banks and insurance companies, public-sector clients and savings banks.

Hypo-Vereinsbank:

bq. What distinguishes the HVB Group and what should you know in any case about us? Here we arranged the substantial facts, so that you can make yourself a picture of the HVB Group. Do you miss something? Please contact us.

Tanja Barbian, a conference interpreter and memberof the AIIC, has started a promising – and elegant – weblog at www.englisch-dolmetschen.de. It may possibly be called Plain English – Language Matters or Interpreter BLOGLINES, but I’m not sure. She regards the blog as an experiment and calls it ‘an interpreter’s more or less public notepad’. Some entries are in German and some in English.

Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung bringt einen Briefwechsel zwischen zwei Deutschen im Jahr 2020:

bq. Odyssee im Sprachraum
Deutschland im Jahr 2020: Jeder schreibt, wie er will. Da ergreift ein Minister die Initiative und erfindet die Rechtschreibreform. Ein Briefwechsel.

Von Christopher Schmidt und Axel Rühle.

bq. Lieber Herr P.,
wie Sie viel leicht wissen, hat sich die Neue Bundes Regierung vor genommen, in ganz Deutsch Land eine ein heitliche Rechtschreibung ein zu führen. Ich weiß, dass das für Außen Stehende vermessen klingen muss. Dennoch habe ich als amtierender Kult Minister gern die schwere Auf Gabe über nommen, dieses Projekt durch zu ziehen. …

bq. Mein Vater erzählte uns, damals habe eine „Kommission“ die deutsche Sprache „in den Mangel genommen“, wie er es aus drückte. Kurz darauf seien schreckliche Video Bilder von zerfetzten Komposita und gedemütigten Verben um die Welt gegangen.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung presents correspondence of the year 2020 between a minister and an agency, trying to introduce a spelling reform after years of anarchy (in German).

I sometimes belong to the (British) Poetry Book Society for a year or two. I like the way they send four new poetry books that I haven’t chosen myself (but I think there are other options). Depending on how much I’m reading, I then decide to stop.

Now the Poetry Book Society has opened a website, Poetry Bookshop Online, through which you can buy poetry books from a selection of over 30,000, either poetry or about poems or poets.

There are poems to read online too.

I assume it makes sense to order this way, even for those of us outside the UK, or outside an English-speaking country, because some of these books are not easily available here. Sometimes the information given on a book is a bit thin. I can imagine finding ideas here and getting more information elsewhere on the Internet. Here’s an example:

bq. Poems of William Blake
Blake, William; Yeats, W.B. (ed.) £8.99
William Blake remains a source of wisdom and inspiration to countless individuals throughout the world. Whether familiar with Blake’s work or not, the reader is here presented with an enlightening encounter with his words and visions.

Yes, well, they would say that, wouldn’t they, to use the Mandy Rice-Davies reaction.

(Via the Independent).

There have been so many good entries in Robin Stocks’ Carob since its resurrection that some have scrolled: on the names of EU directives and regulations, on anglicisms in Switzerland, a long German-English list of Swiss election vocabulary (but we have panaschieren – splitting the vote – in Bavaria too – I suppose a lot of election vocabulary crosses borders), vocabulary from the EU Prospectuses Regulation, citation of ECJ cases in German and English. Other entries are interesting too. I had fun photographing those open-cast coalmines he mentions, when I lived in Cologne.

By the way, I forgot to acknowledge Translate This! recently, although it was one of the two weblogs, along with The Discouraging Word (does anyone else remember the words to ‘Home on the Range’? We used to sing it at junior school) that prompted me to finally write about Truss.

In passing, Isabella Massardo mentioned a book called ‘Righting English that’s gone Dutch’ that might give me some ideas – I’ve toyed with the idea of writing something about how to write legal English, aimed at German lawyers. The problem is that they often know their English is perfect.

bq. Using examples she’s collected, editor and translator Joy Burrough takes a sideways look at what gets unintentionally transferred from Dutch, and why. The result is a contrastive stylebook exploring the zone where Dutch and English meet and giving advice on writing English right.

Following up Joy Burrough-Boenisch on the Web, I came across some interesting old discussions on LANGline in 1999. I must have heard of this before, and I certainly recognize the names of some of those discussing. It is still running, as part of The Electric Editors: The Internet community for editors, proofreaders, indexers, translators and publishers. Looks interesting. And the archives are available (as the Google search showed).

The New York Times had an article on May 19th on the asparagus cult in Germany. It has a good picture of German (‘white’) asparagus. (Via Anne Beryl in Bonn)