Dutch weblogs / Niederländische Blogs

There’s a thread in the non-English sections of ProZ, in non-English, about translators’ weblogs (Blogs van vertalers). This has some links.

Jonathan Faydi has started Batavisme, which is French and Dutch.

Wouter van den Berg has Over vertalen en wat de vertaler verder hoog zit.

Anjo Sterringa has lost in translation. He is in Spain, with dogs, a cat, and donkeys, and translates between Spanish and Dutch and English and Dutch.

Bartvb (English) is by Bart B. Van Bockstaele, who is Flemish and lives in Toronto. So is Wondere Wereld (Dutch). Bart also writes on De Standaard Online.

Saskia Steur writes Wording.

Having the last word/Stimme aus dem Jenseits

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The Talking Tombstone speaks to passers-by. I feel it would be cheaper to get a number of those toy parrots with the voice mechanism and sit them on top of the stone. Of course, they might say the wrong thing.

Gizmodo (German / Deutsch, which has further links) suggests using it for insults:

bq. Noch in der Grube kann man mit diesem sprechenden Grabstein seine Nachwelt beleidigen, Verwandtschaftsstreitigkeiten bis zum Ehrenmord schüren und generell das letzte Wort behalten.

I don’t think one could get away with that in Germany, although it might be hard to pin down a defendant.

Football exhibition at Jewish Museum/Kick it like Kissinger 2

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Hanukkah lights

When I mentioned the football exhibition in the last entry, I forgot to say that the film Bend it like Beckham was translated into German as Kick it like Beckham, hence the title of this exhibition: Kick it like Kissinger, rather than Bend it like Bensemann. And Rabbit-Proof Fence appeared here as The Long Way Home. In the old days they would have been called something like Jessica will es endlich wissen and Drei Aborigine-Mädchen gegen die Welt. Either way, it’s often difficult to guess what film is showing.

The catalogue asks whether football can be presented in a museum and says:

bq. Die Frage, ob Fußball überhaupt ausstellbar ist, verweist auf eine besondere Eigenart der Überlieferung im Fußball: Seine Anhänger bilden eine klassische Erinnerungsgemeinschaft. Sie gruppiert sich um gemeinsame Erlebnisse, die überwiegend mündlich tradiert und immer von neuem erzählt werden.

It’s organized as an alphabet: A for Abseits, B for Bensemann, C for Cup. There are recordings, for instance of football crowds chanting and drumming:

bq. Das Fußballstadion ist zur Kathedrale der Neuzeit geworden: Fußballspiele ersetzen für viele die Kirchenbesuche. Dabei weist das Verhalten von Fangemeinschaften starke rituelle Züge auf. … durch Kleidung in den Vereinsfarben, Gesichtsbemalungen, den Genuss von narkotischen Mitteln und Fangesängen. ….Lieder und Rhythmen entstehen meist spontan während der Spiele und werden durch Klatschen und Paukenschlag unterstützt. Dabei treten unbewusst archaische Elemente in Dreitonfiguren auf, die der Kirchenmusík entspringen, sowie Melodien aus der Volks- und der Popmusik wie auch der Klassik. Die aggressiven Gesänge dienen der Unterstützung der eigenen Mannschaft wie auch der Entmutigung und Abschreckung der gegnerischen Mannschaft und ihrer Fans.

There’s a film of the Theresienstadt football game organized by Nazi propagandists for the International Red Cross delegation – all those shown and many others, almost 20,000, were deported to Auschwitz when the delegation left.

One reason Jews played such a big role in the early days of football championships was because they were excluded from the nationalist German Turnvereine (sports clubs). Hirsch died in Auschwitz, Fuchs escaped to Canada. Sindelar (Austria’s greatest player) died in 1939 at the age of 36 in mysterious circumstances. Friedrich Torberg’s poem associates his death with the Third Reich (it was probably suicide – he’d refused offers from teams abroad – and the Gashahn reference is to the carbon monoxide poisoning found):

Es jubelte die Hohe Warte,
der Prater und das Stadion,
wenn er den Gegner lächelnd narrte
und zog ihm flinken Laufs davon –

bis eines Tages ein andrer Gegner
ihm jählings in die Quere trat,
ein fremd und furchtbar überlegener,
vor dem’s nicht Regel gab noch Rat.

… Er war gewohnt zu kombinieren,
und kombinierte manchen Tag.
Sein Überblick ließ ihn erspüren,
daß seine Chance im Gashahn lag.

The whole poem is here. And the exhibition isn’t like that throughout.

What is German? / Was ist deutsch?

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Some links at the end.
Exhibition at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.
Perhaps more interesting for me than for Germans.
I think they put this exhibition together by getting a group of experts to brainstorm.
Many diverse items.

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FRG and GDR living rooms
GDR Monopoly set
GDR album cover: Lennon & Plastic Ono Band, Shaved Fish, VEB 1983
Building set: Der kleine Großblockbaumeister
A walking-stick-cum-stringed instrument / Spazierstock-Instrument (Stockvioline)
Der deutsche Schäferhund in Wort und Bild, 1905
Uhu, Tempo, Jenaer Glas
Birkenstock, Tipp-Ex, Nivea
Uta von Naumburg the 19th-c. ideal woman (that was a gap in my education)
German Pavilion, World Fair, Chicago 1893 (a huge edifice)
Decorations, pins, Meisterbrief
Vereine, Fasching
Allotments (Schrebergärten)
Der deutsche Wald, Jagd, sport in the forest; Stifter, Studien 2, Der Hochwald
Waldbesteck: Waidblatt mit Scheide, Messer, Gabel und Feile
Wunderbaum car deodorant
Deutsches Reichs-Einkochglas
Funk-Armbanduhr
Winnetou, Kant, Königin Luise
Wurstmaß, 1601
Kehrwoche sign

Missing
They had Christmas but not Advent
They had freedom movements but not the RAF

Thoughts
They said it might do us good to read Goethe and Schiller today, but this wasn’t substantiated. In what way was it meant?
They talked about the theatre being a moralische Anstalt and TV not being. I’ve often thought about this, because German TV can tend to moralize. For example, every six months the news programme suddenly describes a new film it thinks we should see, even though the rest of the time it has no interest in reviews. I listed part of one exhibit in an earlier entry. But TV doesn’t work like that.
At the end of the catalogue are some materials on a survey done in 9 countries plus Germany. Open questions about the Germans are categorized. Example: Germany most often referred to ‘fleißig und pflichtbewusst’, Czechs most often to ‘diszipliniert’.
Negative factors: the Germans most often said their negative side is that they are pessimistic and complain a lot. No other country mentioned this at all! Lots of Czechs said ‘arrogant’, lots of Austrians just said, ‘Don’t like the Germans’.
What I missed was: why didn’t they ask the Swiss? Would the Swiss have said the Germans are untidy?

Information on the exhibition in German and English.
Die Zeit: Online-Umfrage zum Thema

Indemnify and hold harmless / Schad- und klaglos halten

This topic arose in connection with a mailing-list discussion about schaden- und klaglos halten, which is probably intended to be schad- und klaglos halten and is not necessarily an Austriacism.

The question arose (at least for me) whether you need a separate word for klaglos, or whether indemnify or hold harmless is sufficient alone. So it becomes a question of what the English terms mean – a question often asked by those translating into German when faced with pairs of terms in English.

I looked at Mellinkoff’s Dictionary of American Legal Usage, which is one of a number of books one can consult to see if doublets consist of words with different meanings, or if they could be rendered by one.

To summarize:

hold harmless: is understood to protect another against the risk of loss as well as actual loss. Whether or not it includes defense of lawsuits is sufficiently uncertain to warrant detailed provision.

indemnify: a) sometimes a synonym of hold harmless. The identity is made clearer in the expression indemnify against liability.
b) when distinguished from hold harmless, indemnify: to reimburse for any damage. This sense is spelled out as indemnify against loss

indemnify and hold harmless: a lawyer’s hedge against the imprecision of both expressions, by including assumption of loss and liability. Defense of lawsuits still best spelled out.

On the Web I found indemnify and keep indemnified (but I would think indemnify includes that), and also defend, indemnify and hold harmless. The best mailing-list suggestion was indemnify against loss and lawsuits. The indemnify against seemed wrong to me, but that was because I was thinking indemnify = for past loss and hold harmless = for future liability. The very preposition against seems to me to have a future sense in this context.

I don’t know if indemnify and keep indemnified is necessary. If you promise in a contract to indemnify someone, there’s no reference to ‘once only’.

This is all without asking the necessary question as to the meaning of schad- und klaglos halten.

Grafflmarkt / Flea market

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I had a peculiar exchange of words at the flea market. I was looking at a thick DIY book of the 1960s, entitled Die Axt im Haus. But I didn’t get far because one of the stallholders came up to me and said, ‘This book is much better’, and tried to press a copy of Pschyrembel’s Klinisches Wörterbuch into my hands. This seemed odd, because I already have Pschyrembel (I told him mine was fairly recent and he said, ‘Ein zeitloses Werk’), and I haven’t noticed any do-it-yourself tips in there.

However, it seemed he had read the title as Der Arzt im Haus. I said, ‘Der Arzt im Haus ersetzt sich selber’, and ‘Die Axt im Haus ersetzt den Arzt’, but somehow I don’t think we were on the same wavelength.

War paint / WM

This morning:

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Last Wednesday:

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Working Languages points out that Lufthansa haven’t heard of the term ‘World Cup’.

bq. But what is this World Championship of which they speak? Is it in any way connected to the World Cup currently dominating our lives? Could it perhaps be some parallel or even rival event?