Alexander at Jurabilis links to the site e-fellows, which has a list of recruiting partners in big German law firms saying what qualities they look for if they are going to hire an associate.

Alexander points out that the statements don’t give much away. I was struck by the requirement of the big law firms for English:

Gute Englischkenntnisse.
Grundvoraussetzung sind gute Englischkenntnisse.
OK.
Sehr gute Englischkenntnisse (möglichst im Ausland erworben).
Sehr gute englische Sprachkenntnisse, die idealerweise im Ausland erworben wurden, sind erwünscht.
Einstellungsvoraussetzung sind sehr gute, im Ausland erworbene Englischkenntnisse. Eine zweite Fremdsprache ist wünschenswert.
Hmm. These people start learning English very early. Are they not allowed to learn in Germany when they’re ten or eleven? And does the progression from Gut to Sehr gut imply what it sounds like – a higher standard?
Sehr gute Englischkenntnisse, im englischsprachigen Ausland erworben.
Ah, that’s good. So English learnt in Poland won’t do?
Unabdingbar für die tägliche Arbeit ist verhandlungssicheres Englisch, idealerweise durch einen Auslandsaufenthalt vertieft.
Vertieft – now that makes sense.

Who judges this English, I wonder? Lawyers from a generation where these expectations weren’t evident?

Actually, I wrote ‘recruiting partner’. That was an over-simplification. These people were (in German):

Recruitment-Partner; Partner; Recruiting Manager; Recruiting-Partner; Recruitment, Human Resources; Personnel Manager; Managing Partner.

No wonder they need English.

Seit einigen Monaten gibt es ein Terminologieforum im Netz. Ich weiß nicht mehr, wo ich dies zuerst las.

bq. Dieses Forum ist für alle, die mit Terminologie zu tun haben: Übersetzer, Redakteure, Konstrukteure, Entwickler und, und, und
Es soll kein “Expertenforum” darstellen, sondern den Austausch untereinander fördern, unabhängig davon, ob es sich um allgemeine Fragen oder um eine Diskussion zu einem speziellen Aspekt handelt. Sie können z.B. bestimmte Themen abonnieren oder Umfragen starten.

Das Forum ist noch nicht sehr aktiv. Man muss sich registrieren, um Beiträge hinzuzufügen, ansonsten basiert die Site auf einem dieser Forum-Systeme (wer unvorsichtig ist, kommt z.B. mit Geburtsdatum in den Kalender).

Der Verein Deutscher Terminologie-Tag ist in diesem Zusammenhang vielleicht interessant. Man kann die Folien von der Konferenz 2004, Terminologie & Wissensmanagement, einsehen.

Ich habe Professor Schmitz’ “Die neuen Terminologiedatenbanken: online statt offline” überflogen und konnte nicht umhin, den Online-Austausch mit Multiterm beschrieben zu sehen. Da sieht man den Unterschied zwischen Theorie und Praxis – ich vermute, es gäbe Probleme hiermit, aber um das festzustellen, müsste die Verbindung erstmal ermöglicht werden, und das habe ich anders erlebt. To quote Molesworth: Enuff said.

German-language terminology forum. This is intended not for experts, but for all those involved in terminology work. It hasn’t really got off the ground yet. I could imagine that a serious question about terminology problems might reach a wider audience of specialists, or at least this would be my hope (not ‘How would you translate this word?’, but topics relating to the design or use of terminology software, the construction of definitions – but I’m finding it hard to think of useful questions).

There is an organization called Deutscher Terminologie-Tag, the main value of which seems to be its annual conference (and publications). I was a member for a while. They send out a huge pack of quite interesting scans of newspaper articles from various sources, publications in Germany and abroad, with a language connection, like a kind of cuttings service, and I didn’t always have time to process this.

I find ergonomic keyboards fascinating, although I haven’t got one at the moment.

Translation in the Trenches mentions two unfamiliar to me. I’m sure they don’t mind me uploading pictures – it’s all advertising.

First, the Datahand:

DataHand systems say they reduce pain and typing fatigue. I’m sure they do. I think they probably train the brain too.

T in the Ts says you may want to get a model with remappable keys. Software remapping doesn’t work (this is if you want a different keyboard layout).

Then there’s the Ergo Elan, by Kinesis:

This is a Kinesis Contoured keyboard. There are US and non-US versions.

I had my eye on one, also by Kinesis. The angle of split can be varied, starting at nothing. If anyone else needs to use your computer, an ergonomic keyboard can be a problem. Kinesis has two. The Maxim is what I had heard of – it has no numeric keypad, but you can get a separate one.

There’s a German one of these, and you can apparently also do stuff with a footswitch. Footswitches can be got to go with other computer keyboards too, and you can, for example, use a footswitch for a mouse click. This sounds very interesting. I would like to be able to move the mouse cursor by foot. After all, some people can draw pictures with the feet.

Kinesis also do an Evolution keyboard in three varieties.

I’m glad I’ve got BBC World on this new digital cable service, because at least their reporters know who the people are arriving at Camilla and Charles’ wedding. It frees me from those long tracking shots accompanied by silence or irrelevancies.

But I have just heard for the umpteenth time, ‘This is the quire of St. George’s Chapel – quire with a q, confusingly, where the choir sing’.

I know the spelling quire is not incorrect for part of the building, but it’s very rare, isn’t it? Where do these people get their educations?

I’ve just looked at Collins English Dictionary and it says ‘quire: archaic spelling’. At first I thought that maybe the royal family are being silly and insist on the spelling, but Google doesn’t bear me out.

By the way, I heard about the clash with the Pope’s funeral, but not about the Grand National.

While I’m busy elsewhere, here are some more parasitical offerings:

Babelport: There’s a new translation portal out, Babelport. I didn’t bother to look at it at first because these things are springing up like nobody’s business, but I’ve already seen a reference to its price calculator that sounded interesting and Céline of Naked Translations speaks well of it. She also locates another translator’s blog, linguatransl_blog, by Inka-Maria Kunz (be careful – it’s very pink).

Babelport was founded by Christian von Hansel – sorry, that should be Christian V. Hansel (clever middle initial there), who tries his hand at answering a legal translation question (EN>DE ‘void where prohibited by law’). It seems, alas, to have some kind of points system like ProZ.

OPML file for translation blogs: OPML file for translation blogs: Sonja of Translator’s Blog has created an OPML file containing the RSS feeds for several translators’ blogs.

Joi Ito on translation: Michael of Translate This! says Joi Ito’s blog is now available in Japanese too. He comments on Joi Ito’s remarks on payment for translations. In the comments, Joi Ito says the best things in life are free!

Blogos reports (from Danny Sullivan) that Google’s definition search is now multilingual.

To quote the Google Blog:

bq. What’s an “iwi”? What does “spiel” mean? Google Definitions is one example of how we work to make the world’s information more accessible: ask us what a word means, and we’ll try our best to get a good variety of definitions from all corners of the Web. So I’m happy to say that a handy feature just got handier; as of this week, Google Definitions is multilingual, and is indexing more sources than ever.

OK, so I entered in Google:

define: “common law”

(maybe the colon isn’t necessary). And what do I get – a German definition although my Google isn’t set to German. I hate this automatic definition of where I am. Anyway, I can then choose Englisch or Französisch or alle Sprachen.

You have to be cleverer than I am and read Google though:

bq. To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word “define,” then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined. If Google has seen a definition for the word or phrase on the Web, it will retrieve that information and display it at the top of your search results.

You can also get a list of definitions by including the special operator “define:” with no space between it and the term you want defined. For example, the search [define:World Wide Web] will show you a list of definitions for “World Wide Web” gathered from various online sources.

(An important thing to note is that the definitions search is automatic. Many references to a term that will not come up as definitions do actually contain definitions, however phrased, and many don’t.)

Try these two to see how it works:

define:Bratwurst
define Bratwurst

For results, read on: Continue reading →