Robin Stocks at Carob reports on errors in the Polish version of the EU constitution, which has already been published in the Official Journal.

Der Standard:

bq. Warschau – Die EU-Verfassung ist sehr mangelhaft ins Polnische übersetzt worden. Die Ratifizierung könnte dadurch nicht nur um einige Monate verzögert werden, sondern könnte sogar gefährdet sein, berichtete am Mittwoch die polnische Tageszeitung “Rzeczpospolita”. Die Fehler betreffen auch wichtige Mechanismen: So ist bei der Wahl des Komitees für Sozialpolitik von einer qualifizierten Mehrheit der Mitgliedsländer die Rede, obwohl es durch eine einfache Mehrheit bestimmt wird. In der ersten Version würde Polen über nur eine Stimme verfügen, in der anderen hätte Polen dank eines komplizierten Rechnungssystems einen wesentlich größeren Einfluss bekommen.

Rainer Langenhan reports the following talk in German on copyright law for translators. Should be of particular interest to literary translators.

Am Donnerstag, 27.01.2005, 16.30 – 18.00 Uhr, hält Prof. Dr. Maximilian Herberger im Gebäude 4, Konferenzsaal 120, in der Universität des Saarlandes einen Gastvortrag zum Thema “Urhebervertragsrecht für Übersetzer”.

Christopher Moore has written a book, In Other Words, about untranslatables (via translation eXchange).

The NPR site lists some of these words/phrases from various languages. It also has an audio link for an interview.

They include ilunga, from the Tshiluba language, which has been done to death in the media.

For German, the word Korinthenkacker is given:

bq. korinthenkacker [core-in-ten-cuck-er] (noun)
A “raisin pooper” — that is, someone so taken up with life’s trivial detail that they spend all day crapping raisins. You can spot these types a mile off — it’s that irritating pen pusher or filing fanatic whose favorite job is tidying up the stationery cupboard.

I don’t think anyone’s ever told Christopher Moore the difference between raisins and currants.

It sounds like a bit of light reading, just listing such a miscellaneous collection. And is this word not chosen because it is amusing, especially to those who haven’t heard it before? It doesn’t seem untranslatable, although the best equivalents are even more colloquial (I suggest a fart in a colander). Collins has fusspot.

Strangely, Lions Club International has the web address www.korinthenkacker.de. And the book Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen I’ve already lusted after it, but I have too much else to read) gives the synonym Tüpflischeisser.

There have been some speculations as to Prince Harry’s paternity over the years, but there can be no doubt who his grandfather is.

Quotes from Prince Philip at Wikiquote (via quinparker.com).

Example:

bq. “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.”

* Notes: Said during the 1981 recession.

The Policeman’s Blog (via What’s New on the UK Legal Web?). On closed-circuit TV:

bq. The widespread use of CCTV in British town centres is not without its problems. The first of these is that it allows to police to arrive at situations very early on when people are highly agitated and anxious to make complaints of assault against people who happen to be standing next to them. This sets up a trail of bureaucracy which will ultimately result in the arrest, appearance in court and acquittal of both parties. A large part of my work consists of arresting people who make accusations about other people and subsequently end up getting arrested themselves. If I can generate crime numbers and get them to court I can improve my detection rate, I can also earn a bit of overtime by conducting the relevant enquiries, so it’s all win, win, win: Newtown police detection rate goes up, the participants get the satisfaction of seeing their drunken acquaintances in court and Mrs C. gets a new frock.

Walking the Streets, a traffic warden’s diary:

bq. Between one thing and another this isn’t such a bad way to make a living. The pay is better than being a Supermarket Shelf Stacker and once out of the office, you’re your own person. No time to be bored. Every day as they say, is a whole new ball game.

(Amended entry)

There are a number of websites out there like ProZ and Translators Cafe that offer a meeting place for translators. Most of them have two main features of interest: an exchange between translators on questions of translation and business practice, and a job search function.

I noticed yesterday that one such site, Language Forum free translation, has a page listing a large number of recent articles from language weblogs, all posted by a ‘Senior Member’ called rssbot, and it appeared to me that registered and logged-in members could post reactions. In particular, an entry of mine on machine translation had a comment by one tupac, saying he had found something wonderful called Babelfish but misspelling it. You clicked on a title, were then taken to a page where you could make comments, and thence you could click a link to go to the original weblog.

The site describes itself as non-commercial but it obviously increases traffic to its owner(s) – in a similar way to the Belgian site that recently borrowed German blawgs. The site is run by Bernhard Huber.

Actually, at a higher level, the blogs come under this heading:

bq. The news from related translation sites
The last news and other stuff, from other language and translation sites. Les dernières nouvelles et d’autres choses d’autres sites de traduction. –Automatic RSS indexation, the forum is not responsable of the content of this pages–

bq. Misc. , Divers (6 Viewing)
News from various sites about translation and linguistic, nouvelles de sites de traduction et linguistique divers
Sub-Forums: nakedtranslations, Spanish<>English Translators, Xlation Blog, Les coups de langue de la grande rousse, BlogLatin, How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons, Language Log, Language hat, Logomacy, Lagomduktig

Anyway, I’m pleased to report that Transblawg was removed immediately I wrote to ask for it to be removed. Apparently comments are not allowed, but still, I don’t want my feed exploited on other sites, and the risk of comment somewhere in a forum there would mean I’d feel obliged to keep an eye on it.

I found the site by accident, although the owner had actually written to me in September to ask for a link.

A similar situation arose recently when a Belgian website called Izynews was providing feeds of German legal weblogs. There were discussions on a number of blawgs, for instance Udo and Clemens (in German). The latter refers to ways that work at present to stop RSS feeds from being incorporated against the owner’s will:

bq. Wer Perlen vor die Säue wirft, wird schon wissen, was er tut und muss damit leben.

bq. Ist es ihm nicht gleich, muss er auf Mittel zurückgreifen, die Nutzung per RSS/Atom einzuschränken: entweder mit eigenen technischen Mitteln, oder in kollektiver Arbeit, worauf die Argumentation von Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp hinausläuft.

bq. Insofern scheint mir konsequent, dass ich Frames sprenge, die GALJ einbinden, Denials auf bestimmte Referrer und User Agents, die den Inhalt so klauen, dass der Leser die Herkunft nicht mehr erkennen kann, setze oder einen Original nur bei recht.us/amrecht-Popup einsetze.