Trevor has put up a ‘little, slow language blog aggregator’. That means I can see the headers of a variety of language blogs all at once. Very useful.
Has anyone else got one of these? Actually I think a similar scam has been reported by others in the past few weeks:
bq. From: “DR. EMMANUEL OWUSU SEKYERE”
Subject: interpreter
To: …
bq. Hello,
i am Dr. Owusu Sekyere,an orthopedic surgean
in a private hospital in Ghana,and i have a patient
whom i have refered to a hospital in munchen (Germany)
for a surgery on his fracture dislocation but will
need a translator to help him since he’s coming with
his family and only speaks English,
This means he will need someone who can
translate German to English,This family will need this
person,5hours per day for 11 days,I will be very
greatful if you can get back to me in time so i can
have good news for this patient of mine and re-assure
him that right from the airport throughout his
endervours in Austria will be assisted with the aid of
your translator,
Please get back to me on the cost of your
services and any other requirements because he would
like to remit the funds to you before his arrival
date,
Thank you,
Dr. Owusu Sekyere
This patient is apparently not satisfied with going to Munich: he wants to make a trip to Austria too – climbing, probably.
I have heard that members of the ITI (like me) are receiving invitations for interpreting jobs like this:
bq. “A 10-day interpreting job for my daughters who will be going out for
shopping and visiting some beautiful places…”
Or
“My staffs are coming over to the UK for a 4 days seminar which is
taking place in a hotel hall…”
I heard about in in December 2004 and apparently Scotland Yard confirmed that it is a money laundering scam.
The legaltranslators group at Yahoo has yet again received an advertising mail from Translation Directory:
bq. Read more free articles for translators at http://www.TranslationDirectory.com/article_index.htm
with a list of those articles. Most have nothing to do with legal translation, but I had to look at The “Solicitor” – A judicial auxiliary function in the English legal system by A. de Schlichting – Pr. de droit (what is Pr. de droit?). Being a solicitor myself, I was interested to hear I have a judicial function. I love the way they put “Solicitor”, in inverted commas, as if it were dubious. I know those inverted commas are used for emphasis, but that’s not customary in English, is it?
I was slowed down but not stopped when I saw the article was written in French. My headers here may be misleading, but if I wrote an entry in French I would indicate that in the header.
However, I feel I should add some comments to this article.
tous les solicitors ont poursuivi des études universitaires juridiques.
Mais non! I did German at university, not law.
les examens professionnels dans un College of law.
We usually call it le College of Law, not un College of law
peuvent alors être inscrits sur la liste des solicitors (admitted to theRolls).
No, no, no. The Master of the Rolls admits solicitors to the roll (singular). We did have a client once who admitted me to his Rolls, and I must say it was a wonderfully smooth journey.
tout dabord, le solicitor nest pas compétent en matière de plaidoirie (advocacy).
This is a common misunderstanding. Solicitors do masses of advocacy, some of them do nothing else, but all in the lower courts (where the greatest number of trials occur). Some solicitors can even appear in the higher courts nowadays, but there aren’t many of them yet. Some people are told that barristers represent people in court and solicitors don’t. Forget that. The real difference is more like that between a general practitioner – a family doctor – and a specialist. But I do the article an injustice – later this statement is corrected:
Toutefois, le solicitor a le droit de plaider devant des juridictions inférieures telles la Magistrates Court (juridiction répressive inférieure) ou la County Court (tribunal dinstance).
My legal French is not very good so my suspicions about représsive may be wrong, and those about rédiger des actes for drawing up a will.
Pour terminer citons lactivité notariale des solicitors qui leur permet dauthentifier certains actes en tant que notaire (notary public).
This is a rather complex subject. Solicitors can witness signatures. There are various kinds of notaries in England and Wales, some of whom may do more advanced notarial stuff.
Néanmoins, malgré la réforme, on ne peut pas encore parler dune fusion des deux professions.
That’s correct!
The Financial Times (English edition) of 12 April 2005 has two articles on the use of English in German businesses: English is not always music to the ears, and The new lingua germanica.
They will be free online for a couple of days.
The first is about the over-use of English in the German corporate world. The second suggests that many Germans in business feel they cannot be upbeat and proactive in German, for a variety of historical reasons, so they use English.
bq. But he [Hubertus von Grünberg] adds: “Because of the rise of Nazism and its consequences, many Germans are shy about displaying patriotism and showing themselves to be in any way demagogic. As a result, a lot of Germans are scared about coming across as too strongly emotional. In a business setting this can mean German managers steer away from using any type of emotional language, when they want to try to motivate people. There is, therefore, a natural tendency to use English as an alternative.” …
bq. Mr Leibinger also sees the lingering effects of the wartime era, when many German words and phrases were “abused” for propaganda purposes. And later, says Mr Leibinger, words such as Freundschaft (German for friendship) were closely associated with the communist regime of former East Germany. In those times Freundschaft was used as a word of comradely greeting. The word is difficult for many ordinary Germans to use now, says Mr Leibinger, because it evokes memories of dictatorship.
There is discussion of the problems in that not all Germans understand English well, but not of the kind of English that is created in this way.
Thanks to Robin Bonthrone, via the pt mailing list at Yahoogroups.
After my entry on ergonomic keyboards, I saw one of the Google ads here for SmartNAV, a hands-free mouse.
It’s a device that sits on top of the monitor and you steer it with a dot you glue to your forehead, the tip of your nose, your glasses or hat. Good for people with spinal injuries, it says. You can have a footswitch to click with your feet. There is more than one device there, and I haven’t read everything, but maybe this link is of interest to someone.