The Herald Online reports:

bq. TWO Nigerian men, one of them a convicted drug dealer, are facing bribery charges after they offered Port Elizabeth’s only Igbo court interpreter R100 000 to resign from his job.

I suppose the tactics would be better if Igbo were a dying language.

Via Erik Dams, once again.

This isn’t the first time Leonard Domike has been in the papers:

bq. The only official Nigerian court interpreter for Port Elizabeth’s courts has been dealt a blow after the Justice Department’s regional office in East London withheld his January and February salaries, demanding that his foreign language qualification first be verified by the Qualification Board in Pretoria.

Just a minute – the defendants want to pay him and not use him, and the Justice Department wants to use him and not pay him – there must be a solution there somewhere.

Thanks to Trevor for reading on and giving me the story about the base guitarist:

bq. The band has been making headlines after its base guitarist, Wynand Myburgh, wrote “F**k God” on a teenager’s wallet in Witbank last month.

QED.

Die Blog-Lesung ist im Kommen. Kaum sind zwei Lesungen in München angekündigt, bevor eine 1. Fränkische Blog-Lesung in Fürth angekündigt wird. Nicht nur vor Nürnberg, nein, es ist die Fürther Südstadt, wo diese (allerdings nur teilweise echte fränkische) Bloggerauslese für lumpige 3 Euro vorträgt, und zwar im ehemaligen Tengelmann (die Schließung von Tengelmann war einer der Tiefpunkte der letzten Jahre hier).

Die Fürther Südstadt ist übrigens hinter der Baumgruppe versteckt.

Mehr Informationen beim mysteriösen zonebattler.

It’s Spiegel again, getting its knickers in a twist about ‘strange British laws’, a book by Nigel Cawthorne that’s actually been around for a while.

bq. Cawthorne ist Großbritanniens Experte, wenn es um die merkwürdigsten Gesetze des Landes geht. Im November vergangenen Jahres veröffentlichte er sein 266 Seiten starkes Werk “The Strange Laws of Old England”, in dem er auf süffisante Weise die Possen der britischen Gesetzgebung beschreibt.

Make that ‘September vorvergangenen Jahres’. And as for Cawthorne being an expert on Britain’s laws, he is also an expert on:
the world’s greatest serial killers
sex lives of Hollywood goddesses (whatever they are)
the curious cures of old England
sex lives of the kings and queens of England
sex lives of the great dictators
sex lives of the popes (watch out, Benedict)
history of pirates: blood and thunder on the high seas
and that probably isn’t all

For example, it’s presented as an exciting new find that people aren’t allowed to die in the Palace of Westminster.

bq. “Soweit ich weiß, ist dort bisher noch niemand gestorben, aber, wenn doch, wurde vielleicht der Fall auch gar nicht erfasst. Schließlich gibt es im Parlament theoretisch diesen Fall gar nicht.”

I think people most certainly have died there, and the street outside has been recorded as the place of death.

bq. In den vergangenen 40 Jahren wurden bereits 2000 Gesetze gestrichen, aber es gibt immer noch 4000 nationale, 11.000 lokale und 13.000 private Rechtsprechungen, die gültig sind.

Rechtsprechungen!

bq. Kevin Martin, Vorsitzender der britischen Rechtsgesellschaft, ärgert das schon lange. Er fordert, dass sich endlich etwas tut.

Die britische Rechtsgesellschaft? That sounds impressive. Could they mean the Law Society? If to be translated, perhaps another term might suggest itself, like Anwaltsverein (and yes, keen commenters, I am aware that barristers have their own).

Thanks to Herbert on an ITI list.

Only for UK residents, the London Goethe Institut has a competition – deadline April 10 – to translate part of Ronald Reng’s Gebrauchsanweisung für London (2004), which describes the author’s experience playing football for the FC Churchill in England, including a 2:3 loss to a Catalan team. Competition. Text.
Gebrauchsanweisung für London

You don’t have to be a translator – in fact, it’s better if you don’t earn your living from translation, because it’s a huge piece (some parts are marked as not to be translated, but the rest is quite a lot).

(Via Erik Dams)

The mysteriously uplifted Chartered Institute of Linguists (see earlier entries) has revamped its website but not its domain name (at ciol.org.uk something else can be found). The menu items are all preceded by >, but perhaps that is a mistake? There is a Discussion Forum there, on which legal translation questions are sometimes discussed (for instance by the mysterious Maurice), but it is offline due to technical problems at the moment.

Tina Vallès (Catalan) reports that the word translator was used as an insult for Mourinho of Chelsea – see this article (Portuguese LATER NOTE No! it’s Spanish…should have recognized that before being corrected by a lover of pedantry) – he used to help Robson at Barcelona press conferences:

bq. Un grupo reducido de aficionados del Barça, cerca de una veintena, le recibieron con gritos de “traductor, traductor”, en alusión a su época en el Barça, cuando llegó como asistente de Robson en las ruedas de prensa.

(Via Trevor)