A translation is done for business purposes if it’s done for a freelance translator in another country, and that includes one who is not registered for VAT. So if I, in Germany, do a translation for a UK client, I charge VAT only if the client is a private person.

The diagram is taken from just before section 12 of VAT Notice 741, Place of Supply of Services. There is a list of notices online, but the number is given as 742, which isn’t correct.
HM Revenue & Customs has the notices online. The reverse charge, or tax shift, is described in 15.1.

The reverse charge arises when a translator in the UK, not registered for VAT (they often aren’t, and the threshold above which you have to register is higher), does work for me. It is deemed to be done in Germany, and I have to pay VAT on it. But at the same time I can deduct this VAT payment:

15.4 How does the reverse charge work?
You simply credit your VAT account with an amount of output tax, calculated on the full value of the supply you have received, and at the same time debit your account with the input tax to which you are entitled, in accordance with the normal rules. The partial exemption implications for reverse charge services are explained in Notice 706 Partial exemption.

The relevant parts of the statutes are mentioned in these articles or in the VAT notice.

Value Added Tax Act 1994 (UK)
Umsatzsteuergesetz 1980 (Germany)

Article in English by Kay Fisher at Translatorscafe.

Deutscher Artikel über USt für Übersetzer von Per Döhler auf der ADÜ-Nord-Website.

Taken at a local supermarket about ten days ago.

Here’s another translation weblog, Translation Musings. The blogger seems to have been active in April but not in May, however. (Via blogroll of The German-English Translator)

It sounds as if Piano Man may come from the Czech Republic:

bq. The behaviour of the unidentified stranger, who is in a secure unit in north Kent, has left health professionals flummoxed. All attempts to coax him into communication, including the use of interpreters from Poland, Lithuania and Latvia – but not the Czech Republic – have failed. He cowers when approached by strangers and is constantly anxious.

What I wonder is why did they try Poland, Lithuania and Latvia? Or did they try whoever they had at hand in North Kent? Or did they try many, and are just naming the East European ones?

Markenbusiness News reported (in German) that a Munich court ordered a lawyer to release the domain name fatum.de to a Mr or Ms Fatum.

bq. Nach einem Urteil des LG München (Az: 27 O 16317/04) steht das Recht an der Domain fatum.de dem klagenden Namensinhaber zu. Ein Rechtsanwalt hatte den Begriff im Jahr 2000 angemeldet, seitdem aus Zeitgründen aber keine Inhalte auf der Website hinterlegt. Jetzt muss er die Domain bei der deutschen Domainregistrierungsstelle DENIC freigeben.

The lawyer has never got round to putting up a horoscope site (Latin fatum, German Schicksal, English fate).

In the baroque period, if I remember right, a lot of German names were latinized. I once shared a flat with a Noltenius (originally Nolte). How Fatum became a surname is more mysterious.

The court held that the name could be generic, but in this case the owner of the name had priority.

This matter has also been reported by domainblog (in German), which got the information on a list from a lawyer called Noogie C. Kaufmann. Now there’s a good name! It reports the court as saying that one reason for not defining fatum.de as purely generic was that the German translation is only familiar to persons with a knowledge of Latin [or English? MM], but this ‘does not apply to the majority of the population’.

(Thanks to Lisa of Luxus Linguae)

The following entry is about a certificate that is only in German.

Zum Gerichts- und Behördenterminologie Buch, das ich neulich erwähnte, gibt es die Möglichkeit, ein “Fachzertifikat” zu bekommen. Das ist vielleicht interessant für diejenigen, die Kenntnisse vorweisen wollen.

Diese Möglichkeit wird von Senator E.h. Reinold Skrabal in Baden-Württemberg geboten (nachträglich möchte ich Dr. Daum seinen chinesischen Professorentitel zurückgeben). Es heißt “nach der Methode Prof. Dr. Jur. Ulrich Daum”, aber ob das bedeutet, dass die Prüfungsfragen denen der bayerischen Staatsprüfung ähneln, weiß ich nicht. Man soll das Daum-Buch studieren und dann per Post 200 Fachfragen beantworten. Es gibt Prüfungsvoraussetzungen – Übersetzer und Dolmetscher, die weder beeidigt noch staatlich oder akademisch geprüft sind, müssen mehrere Jahre Berufserfahrung haben.

Preis und Details können bei Herrn Skrabal, der für Französisch und Italienisch in Bayern und Baden-Württemberg beeidigt ist, in der Form eines 5-seitigen Merkblatts bestellt werden. Hier seine Webseiten, dort auch andere Studienangebote.

LATER NOTE: the original Spanish and English versions are both online, and Geoff Pullum has established that the translation deviates only slightly from the Google translation, which suggests a native speaker revised the MT.

Geoffrey K. Pullum of Language Log has been given a brochure in Spanglish and wonders how it was created.

bq. When one has finished giggling, and one has noted that The development business is reserved the right to make any change that be necessary, one finds oneself wondering: who on earth could approve English this bafflingly dreadful for publication in a full-color brochure that must have cost thousands of euros, while knowing so little English that they could not see they were signing off on impenetrable gibberish? Why was no one who knew English from long acquaintance brought in to cast an eye over it?

Is it machine translation? It lacks the untranslated words that aren’t in the dictionary, a feature usually associated with this kind of thing.

bq. Could it be pride, an unwillingness to admit to not being adequately fluent in the nascent global language of commerce and the most frequently encountered language spoken by visitors to Spain? (“I speak English,” as the waiter Manuel from Barcelona in the John Cleese “Fawlty Towers” series, proudly and dramatically; “I learn it from a book!”) The frequent uses of “its” for “is” suggest the material above really was typed by someone who thought they knew what they were hearing, and did know various common English words. Or could it be that someone called up a web-accessible translator, typed in the Spanish text, and actually trusted the output to be fit to print, not realizing that the machine translation problem has yet to be solved?

Here’s an example of the use of its for is:

bq. In the south of the Valencian Community, opening step to the Costa Blanca, its found Pilar de la Horadada. Its coastal seaboard of more than 4Km.,its spring climate during all the year an the behavior of its peoples do of this municipality a privileged place to pass some unforgettable holidays.

All I can speculate is that it was probably done by a human being, or else a machine translation was done and a secretary asked to type it up. If I knew more Spanish, I might make a better guess.

NOTE: This book is purely in German and deals with German terminology.

SPÄTERE ANMERKUNG: Das Buch behandelt nur deutsche Terminologie, außer in der deutsch-spanisch-Ausgabe)
Bis vor kurzem war ein Teil der Staatlichen Prüfung für Übersetzer in Bayern eine 30-Minuten-Aufgabe zu Gerichts- und Behördenterminologie. Denn jede/r, mit welchem Fachgebiet auch immer, der/die die Staatsprüfung besteht, darf für die Gerichte übersetzen. Ich glaube, das Fach ist jetzt leider nur Teil der Kurse an den Fachakademien in Bayern. Beeidigung von Übersetzern und Dolmetschern ist Sache der Länder, die anderen Landesprüfungen enthalten so ein Teil auch nicht.

Als ich die Prüfung in München ablegte, um meine eigenen Studenten und Kollegen in Erlangen zu vermeiden, sah ich, dass viele vor der Prüfung in einem Skriptum (eine “Handreichung”!) von Dr. Ulrich Daum blätterten, das ich nachher selber bestellte und das ab dann auch von unseren Studenten bestellt wurde.

Jetzt ist es neu aufgelegt und überarbeitet und kann, anscheinend auch von Nicht-BDÜ-Mitgliedern, über die BDÜ-Website bestellt werden (auf ‘Publikationen’ klicken). Dort findet man auch andere Bücher. Das Buch existierte und existiert wahrscheinlich noch auch mit einem spanischen Teil, da müsste man sich beim SDI in München erkundigen.

bq. Gerichts- und Behördenterminologie
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Daum
Der Vorläufer der von Prof. Dr. Daum hier vorgelegten, überarbeiteten Handreichung zur Sprache von Gericht und Verwaltung war gut und gerne zwanzig Jahre lang schon das Vademecum angehender Gerichtsdolmetscher.

bq. Bedenkt man, dass die in diesem Buch behandelte Sprache in der akademischen Ausbildung von Übersetzern und Dolmetschern wenig vorkommt, die Tätigkeit der Berufskollegen für Justiz und Behörden hingegen breiten Raum einnimmt, wird deutlich, wie wichtig diese Einführung ist.

bq. Kandidaten der Staatsprüfung für Übersetzer und Bewerber um Beeidigung als Dolmetscher finden hier die wichtigsten einschlägigen Informationen und sprachlichen Besonderheiten zusammengetragen.
ISBN 3980824292
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
Preis 15.00 €

Hier ist noch eine Seite, wo man vielleicht die spanische Version direkt von Dr. Daum bestellen kann. Ich fürchte allerdings, dass Fingerzeige für die Gesetzes- und Amtssprache, 11. Auflage 1998, Quelle & Meyer Verlag, längst vergriffen ist.

Deutscher Eintrag, Weblog entlarvt Mörder, bei Udo Vetter.

Sek Man Ng started his weblog in October 2002. On May 12 2005, the last entry finished like this:

bq. Anyway today has been weird, at 3 some guy ringed the bell. I went down and recognized it was my sister’s former boyfriend. He told me he wants to get his fishing poles back. I told him to wait downstair while I get them for him. While I was searching them, he is already in the house. He is still here right now, smoking, walking all around the house with his shoes on which btw I just washed the floor 2 days ago! Hopefully he will leave soon, oh yeah working on the jap report as we speak!

The ‘sister’s former boyfriend’ has now been charged with the murder of Ng and his sister just after this – the weblog confirmed his whereabouts.

English-language report here:

bq. Sam Cheung, a cousin of the Ngs, is still in disbelief.
“It’s unbelievable that it was one single guy!” said Cheung, 24. “He took two lives. How can one person do this?”

The trick is to do them consecutively, I believe.

perlentaucher.de verlinkt internationale Kommentare zu den Neuwahlen.

perlentaucher.de (in German) gives a number of links to international coverage (some of it in English) on the German elections called for by Schröder.

Some papers are trying out epithets for Angela Merkel, and Kate Connolly in the Telegraph chooses iron maiden. I suppose this is meant to be a weaker form of the Iron Lady. Unfortunately there seem to be weaknesses in British educational standards – the iron maiden was a bit tougher than Maggie.

bq. She is known by the German media as the “das eiserne mädchen” (the iron girl) – suggesting that she lacks the Iron Lady’s toughness in pushing through radical reforms. Indeed she herself has promoted the idea that she is “deeply rooted” in Germany’s social-market economy.

That’s true, but still no reason to mistranslate it.

Here is another picture on a book cover (Bram Stoker translated by Steffen Radlmaier).

perlentaucher.de has an English-language site called signandsight.

There, there is a page in English on the call for elections (but some of the sites linked are in German!)

Apparently one type of the iron maiden / Eiserne Jungfrau is associated with Nuremberg, but now in the crime museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. There have been a couple of women politicians associated with Nuremberg, but they were SPD.

Wikipedia on torture, with photo of iron maiden. The spikes pierced the victim’s eyes, chest and genitals.