Britain and England

The New York Times has an amusing article on the small revenges people take against things that annoy them.

This mystifies me, though:

bq. Most people participate in this sort of behavior on some level, Professor Scott said, adding that his own habit was to write “England” rather than “United Kingdom” on letters he sends to his British friends. He described this as his way of disregarding British claims to Wales and Scotland.

Is this correctly summarized? Or should it read ‘on letters he sends to his English friends…disregarding English claims…’?

He surely doesn’t write ‘England’ on letters to Wales and Scotland, does he? Because that would have the opposite effect.

I usually write ‘England’ on letters to England and ‘Scotland’ on letters to Scotland. Am I making a statement I didn’t intend? Sometimes I write ‘Great Britain’, though. That would be incorrect if I wrote to Northern Ireland, wouldn’t it? But I don’t write to Northern Ireland.

Perhaps it’s too late to think straight, but I can’t think of any way of achieving what this man seems to want to do.

It’s a problem for German students learning English, too. They often say ‘England’ meaning the UK. That’s OK if they are referring to London, but not for Glasgow. Or they will translate ‘die englische Königin’ as ‘the English Queen’ instead of ‘the Queen’.

DE EN DE law dictionary/juristisches Wörterbuch

Das neue Cornelsen-Wörterbuch ist ganz ordentlich gemacht, trotz einiger marktüblicher Fehler, hat etwa 27,000 Begriffe in jeder Sprachrichtung und kostet knapp 30 Euro. Es könnte für Studenten interessant sein oder für alle andere, die die größeren Werke (Romain, Dietl) nicht brauchen/wollen. Dr. Walter Bachem und Dr. Dieter Hamblock sind Anglisten an der Ruhr-Uni Bochum. (Hamblock hat ein paar andere gute Wörterbücher veröffentlicht). Es könnte allerdings Konkurrenz bekommen.

amazon.de Link: Wörterbuch Recht,…

Bei Beck ist Klaus Fleck’s Wörterbuch Recht FR>DE, DE>FR 2004 erschienen (EUR 28). Vielleicht bringt Beck sowas für Englisch heraus? Bei Langenscheidt soll auch ein Rechtswörterbuch September 2005 erscheinen, allerdings mit Schwerpunkt Vertragsrecht (siehe früheren Eintrag). Hier soll der Preis des gedruckten Werks ebenfalls EUR 29 sein, knapp EUR 50 mit CD-ROM.

amazon.de Link: Wörterbuch Recht, Französisch-Deutsch,…

Langenscheidt schreibt: “Rund 11.000 Fachbegriffe und mehr als 22.000 Übersetzungen je Sprachrichtung.” Man muss eine Seite sehen, um die Bedeutung von diesen Zahlen zu sehen. Laut ihren eigenen Verlagen haben Cornelsen 27,000 Einträge in jeder Richtung, Lister/Veth (Hueber Taschenwörterbuch Recht, 2 Bände, 8.000 Begriffe DE>EN und 10.000 EN>DE, Köbler (Rechtswörterbuch für jedermann) 10.000 bis 14.000 Stichwörter in jede Richtung.

Weblogs

Maybe I can cut down the work on this site and just concentrate on publicizing translation weblogs.

I have long since stopped listing new German law weblogs, and I am afraid many of those I read via their newsfeeds must be offended that I don’t blogroll them, but there are two excellent resources for keeping up with them: Rainer Langenhan’s collective feed ‘German Blawgs’ – the latest OPML file has 73 blogs, and it can be entered into a feed reader very easily. The other possibility is to follow Matthias Klappenbach’s JuraBlogs, which presents feeds of more or less the same collection.

A new Spanish translation blog by Carlos Ferrero Martín, Las palabras son pistolas cargadas (many thanks for the kind words – maybe legal translation seems very distant, but at the moment I am struggling with a translation relating to the Three Holy Host-Wafers – Die Heiligen Drei Hostien), links to a slightly older one, Translation Resources, by María Cristina-Argentina in Buenos Aires – am not sure if the ‘Argentina’ is part of her name or not.

It also mentions a Spanish technical writers’ weblog with a translation interest, Spanish techies by Mario Chávez, a translator (his name is familiar to me from somewhere – FLEFO?).

Clicking on traducción or translation in these Blogspot bloggers’ profiles brings up a list of more bloggers with the same interest, but I have decided to stop for now.

Afghan interpreter’s blog

Richard Schneider at Übersetzerportal links to an Afghan weblog, Afghan Warrior (Schneider article).

bq. Der 20-jährige Waheed arbeitet seit zwei Jahren als Dolmetscher für die US-Armee in der Hauptstadt Kabul.

Waheed says he’s the first Afghan blog, and he reports on events in Afghanistan rather than on interpreting and translation.

Richard Schneider liefert regelmäßige Nachrichten über Übersetzung und Dolmetschen, oft sind es Berichte, die man nirgends sonst findet.

Richard reports regularly in German on interpreting and translation news, and many of his stories are firsts.

Impressum ausgeschlachtet

Was meint ihr juristische Blogger hierzu: eine amerikanische Gesellschaft, www.kellysearch.com, bietet eine global business search. Dort erscheint mein Name, URL, Adresse und Telefonnummer. Offensichtlich wurde es aus meinem Impressum genommen.

Natürlich sollen Kunden mich finden können, wenn sie absolut wollen, und neue Kunden wollen auch sehen, dass eine Internetpräsenz da ist. Aber ich habe keiner solchen Veröffentlichung zugestimmt und suche nicht auf diesem Weg.

Vielleicht sind solche Erscheinungen nicht zu vermeiden? Ich werde um Löschung bitten, wenn es einen Sinn hat.

Translation weblog

I found Paul Frank’s Language Jottings in the links at geotransblog.

It describes itself as follows:

bq. Here you’ll find occasional jottings on language, translation, and whatever strikes my fancy. I’m a Chinese-English translator for Sinorama magazine in Taipei, China Rights Forum in New York City, and a few other folks here and there. You can reach me at paulfrank@post.harvard.edu.

I seem to think the author was or is a member of LANTRA. He says El País is selling El Poema del mío Cid for one euro tomorrow. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Translation in The Guardian

Bild

Eva Braun wollte zehn weitere Frauen haben, die aber wegen der totalen Mobilmachung … nicht sofort zu Stelle waren. Darüber beklagte sie sich bei Hitler. Der war empört und herrschte Bormann zornig an: ‚Ich stampfe ganze Divisionen aus dem Boden. Da müßte es doch ein leichtes sein, ein paar Mädels für meinen Berghof zu beschaffen! Organisieren Sie das!‘“

Guardian:

…on one occasion, he flew into a rage when it proved difficult to hire 10 more serving girls. “I stamp whole divisions into the dirt!” screamed Hitler. “And I can’t get a few more serving sluts for the Berghof?”

Bild:

Als es um die Aufmachung der Damen ging, scherzte Hitler über Eva Brauns Lippenstift, der Spuren an der Serviette hinterließ. Lachend meinte er, jetzt, in der Kriegszeit, stelle man Lippenstiftersatz aus Tierkadavern her.“

Guardian:

He would laugh at Eva’s lipstick on a serviette and then say, ‘During wartime lipstick is produced out of dead bodies.'”

Bild is not the source of the Guardian quotes, but it looks as if the German both report on has got mangled a bit (bold by MM).

(Thanks to the GerNet list on the ITI)

Translation Journal

The new edition of Gabe Bokor’s excellent Translation Journal is available. It has two good obituaries of Tom Snow, Flefoid and previous awarder of the premature TJ Snow memorial prizes, who used to add a long sig to his name:

bq. Well, it was originally

bq. Thomas J. “Any serious offer considered” Snow,
non-Failure, ATA Not Absolutely Incompetent Qualification, German-to English,
Sponsor, the internationally acclaimed and highly coveted Anticipatory Thomas J. Snow Memorial Prize for Significant Contribution to the Mistery,
Founder and Executive Director for Life, The Big Hug Club (Inernational, soon to be a major Walt Disney Enterprise),
CEO, Cheap-O Translations,
“when cost is the only considuration”,
formerly Quick and Dirty Translations,
formerly For Information Only Translations,
successors to Accurate and Reader Friendly Translations,
a subsidiary of Extreme Translations, Inc.

bq. I am really broke. I had too small a customer base and they were dying and retiring at an alarming rate, so I decided to represent myself in a more serious light.

There’s also an article by Betty Howell on her life in translation, in part on something I’ve heard her talk on:

bq. I developed my own technique, which consisted of not reading the text first but immediately doing a draft translation, leaving the dictionaries and the library research until there was a text in English ready to work with. Once there was something down on paper I could work with, it was time to make sure that my translation made sense and really expressed the message of the original. I found reading out loud to be an especially helpful way to make sure that the result was idiomatic English. These techniques I would later call my “patented approach” to translation. It has always aroused vigorous opposition from academics and strong support from students.

I don’t usually think of myself as an academic, but I obviously am here!

Apart from that, I have looked at ‘The Bottom Line’, the agony aunt column by Fire Ant and Worker Bee. I find this fascinating. I have it on the highest authority that the letters are genuine, but why do they all sound the same and have the same kind of nicknames (e.g. ‘Roped in Expert’, reply begins ‘Dear Roped’)? Still, I have seen missives like that of ‘Sherri, of the Grossly Talkative Clan’ elsewhere.

Worker Bee is rather on the serious side and Fire Ant rather on the trivial side, so they should meet in the middle. From this issue’s selection, we derive that we translators should be professional, should be sensitive to language, especially our target language, but should know our source language very well, and that we should have an SOP.