At Language Log, Geoffrey Pullum writes of the Neil Entwistle case, citing this:

bq. Priscilla Matterazzo told Connolly that her daughter returned to Massachusetts with her husband and baby in part because, the affidavit said, “Neil would never amount to anything in England because of his accent: He was obviously a coal miner’s son from a working class background.”

Pullum writes that this would be inconceivable in the USA.

bq. I wish I could dismiss it as nonsense to say that having an accent that marks you out as being from a working-class home in Worksop, Nottinghamshire (near Sherwood Forest, in the middle of England) might alter your employment prospects in a downward direction. But it is undeniable that if you elide initial [h] and pronounce putt the same way you pronounce put, speakers of British English will instantly draw a few conclusions about your likely intelligence level, reliability, morals, etc.

I suppose in the USA you don’t put a photo on your job application (unlike Germany) and you don’t mention your race, but ‘black English’ on the phone would not lead to such conclusions?

Anyway, there’s no doubt that people are aware of class in Britain. Things have changed a bit – I know some people who, forty years ago and maybe even less, learnt received pronunciation and gave up their regional accents. At that time, you scarcely heard an ‘accent’ on TV. Nowadays, watered-down Cockney or Estuary English would not even indicate class.

Meanwhile, back to the Entwistle case – when Neil Entwistle turned up in England in January, followed by Massachusetts prosecutors, it was at first said that he was not being sought in connection with the murder of his wife and child, but later he was described as ‘a person of interest’. I take this to be the US equivalent of ‘helping the police with their enquiries’.

Person of interest is on the Lake Superior State University 2006 List of Banished Words, and I’d only just met it:

bq. PERSON OF INTEREST – Found within the context of legal commentary, but seldom encountered at cocktail parties. “People with guns want to talk with you.” – Melissa Carroll from Greensboro, NC. “Does this mean the rest of us are too boring to deal with?” – Patricia Johnson from Mechanicsville, Va.

Mechanicsville!

An article by Joachim Güntner in the NZZ (Welche Autorenrechte gebühren einem Übersetzer?) takes up the topic of how literary translators are to get better payment.

Publishers are loth to regard translators as another kind of author, and one of them referred to the idea of a fair price as ‘medieval’. Translators who expect better payment and also a share of profits are seen as acting above their status.

bq. Einen Roman von – sagen wir – Umberto Eco zu übersetzen, hat einen höheren Rang als die Übertragung einer italienischen Gebrauchsanweisung ins Deutsche. Niemand bezweifelt das.

Well, that was a rather weighted example, wasn’t it? (I bet more people read the instructions than they do the Eco…)

The article quotes a judge who thinks translators should be paid the same amount as secondary-school teachers, and Burkhart Kroeber, who translates Eco, who compares the payment rights or pianists or theatre directors. There is also a description of the rather civilized payments system of the Diogenes Verlag in Zurich, guaranteeing a share of profits to a certain extent, and above that sharing profits among translators or putting them towards financing new translations.

Meanwhile, in the new ADÜ-Nord Infoblatt, Draga Gradincevic-Savic describes the evil effects of the new statute on the payment of interpreters. No sooner is a German Act passed trying to ensure that police interpreters are paid a reasonable fee than the police oblige those working for them to enter into standard agreements for low fees, and what’s more, with no guarantee of frequent work such as the Act envisages.

Penguin science fiction flyer c. 1980:

London c. now (defaced poster, December 2002):

Sentencing is the topic of Volume 58 of the Stanford Law Review – all articles are available online. The volume consists of three issues: the first deals with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the second contains miscellaneous articles, and the third contains articles on the death penalty. .

(über strafprozess, Konrad Jeker’s Swiss criminal law blog)

Probably too late to send anyone this soap:

(from FeMaledictions)

BILDblog suspects that BILD did not really understand some English (‘The two leaders shook hands’) – although I have to say that Pravda’s English is not much to write home about either.

Pravda:

bq. “We are witnessing the events of paramount significance. Two big leaders shook hands. (manifest reference to Gorbachev and Reagan). But we have to wait for a long time before the Eighth One will come forth and sign a final peace agreement on Earth.” (January 1988)

BILD:

bq. 1988 kündigte sie an: „Zwei große Führer werden ihre Hände schütteln, aber wir müssen lange warten, ehe die großen Acht Frieden bringen.“ Tatsächlich: Gorbatschow und Reagan beenden den Kalten Krieg. Rußland trat 2005 einer Staatenorganisation bei, die G8 heißt – die großen Acht.

Did they have the same source? I am not sure how BILD could have got from “the Eighth One” to “die großen Acht”.

Another example:

bq. “Everything will melt away like ice yet the glory of Vladimir , the glory of Russia are the only things that will remain. Russia will not only survive, it will dominate the world. (1979)

bq. Zuvor würde aber der Ruhm „Wladimirs“ schmelzen wie Eis in der Sonne.