Fuel cell submarines and translators/Brennstoffzellen-U-Boote und Übersetzer

u212a.jpg

U-Boot Klasse 212A
Submarine Class 212A

Deutscher Bericht in der Süddeutschen Zeitung.
The 212A is a newly developed submarine being produced in Germany and Italy, running on a fuel cell that makes it particularly quiet and allows it to stay submerged longer, so a number of other states are interested in the details.

Michaela T. is a German translator who went to the USA some years ago, had an American passport and lived in Canada with her husband and children. On her ProZ home page she calls herself ‘The German-English translator’, and she mainly translates into English.

Last year Michaela T. was commissioned to translate a military manual of the HDW shipyard in Kiel (see picture and links above). She translated the book, with assistance of others, and there were payment problems. The job had been worth 100,000 dollars. She then phoned up the Chinese Embassy in Ottowa and offered to sell the manual to a Chinese secret service official. However, the line was tapped. She later offered the manual to an undercover agent, and it will have to be established in court whether this was a case of entrapment or whether the initiative came from her.

Michaela T. was arrested in the autumn when she was visiting her father in Germany, and she is now in pre-trial custody. The story has long since been reported, inter alia by Richard Schneider at the Übersetzerportal and on Translators Cafe, but the Süddeutsche article is new (see latest Richard Schneider article).

Langue sauce piquante weblog

Fancy that – banlieue is related to Bannmeile.

bq. Chez les Francs, le ban désignait une proclamation. Dans la société féodale, en temps de guerre, le suzerain battait le rappel chez ses vassaux : le ban. C’était aussi un règlement ou une annonce qui s’appliquaient à une ville et sa banlieue, c’est-à-dire l’étendue d’une lieue (4 km) autour d’elle.

Nice French weblog – Langue sauce piquante calls itself Le blog des correcteurs du monde.fr (Martine Rousseau and Olivier Houdart)

(Via languagehat)

Translators database error/Übersetzerdatenbankfehler

I happened to be looking at the Juraforum site and I tried their translator database. I searched for a translator from German to English, living in Germany and specializing in law.

There were three results: the second was a company in Hamburg and the third a woman in Lauf, but the first, in bold (unlike the others) was Max Mustermann. I see he also does Czech.

Anschrift Musterstr. 1
12345 Musterort
Deutschland
Wegbeschreibung
Telefon 123456
Telefax 123457
Homepage http://www.Ihre-Homepage-Adresse.de
E-Mail Ihre@email-adresse.de

Übersetzerabschluss:
Musterabschluss

Muttersprache:
Deutsch

Fachbereiche:
Computer/Informatik/Telekommunikation
Recht allgemein
Politik/Geschichte allgemein

Sprachen:

Deutsch « » Englisch
Deutsch « » Tschechisch

Doorbells and weblogs

Stuart Mudie asks in a comment to the last entry whether I’m trying to compete with Andrew Losowsky. Well, I had not seen his doorbell pictures although I had heard of Barçablog.

Anyway, I can’t say at the moment when I took my first doorbell photo, but it was before the first posted here on September 16th 2003. And I see that was about the time Andrew started noticing the Florence doorbells. On September 21 2004 he writes:

Nearly a year ago, I was wondering around Florence and found myself unnecessarily fascinated by a single aspect of that Renaissance city of incredible art and breathtaking architecture: the doorbells.

He adds a short fiction to each picture now (here’s an example – being a literal sort of person, I was disappointed by a fiction).

I am not trying to say Look I was first! I just don’t want people thinking I got the idea from a famous and trendy blogger.

door4w.jpg

door5w.jpg

(Nürnberg)