Football fans / Fussballanhänger

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Just a few pictures since, as I have already said, this blog has nothing to do with the World Cup!

There is a webcam of the main marketplace in Nuremberg, where fans can drink and watch, either the scene at present or a speeded-up film of the past 30 minutes, at the Nürnberger Nachrichten site (scroll down).

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This was ‘God save the Queen’ by a fan with drum who had gatecrashed a classical music busking duo:

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This one needs some Photoshopping:

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Note the Lebkuchenherz slogans: Wir holen den Titel and Elf Freunde müsst ihr sein

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I’m afraid this person’s friends tried to put paint on my face in the German colours!

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Trinidadians on stilts:

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The baker Beck:

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Some people will get in the way of the camera:

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scilicet / ss.

In an earlier entry I referred to various meanings of the abbreviation ss.

That is one of the problems, that ss. can mean a variety of things, and my summary may be a bit confusing. Ian Harknett points out that there is an 1856 Bouvier law dictionary online that says ss. means scilicet:

SCILICET. A Latin adverb, signifying that is to say; to wit; namely.
2. It is a clause to usher in the sentence of another, to particularize that which was too general before, distribute what was too gross, or to explain what was doubtful and obscure. It neither increases nor diminish the premises or habendum, for it gives nothing of itself; it may make a restriction when the preceding words may be restrained. Hob. 171 P. Wms. 18; Co. Litt. 180 b, note 1.
3. When the scilicet is repugnant to the precedent matter, it is void; for example, when a declaration in trover states that the plaintiff on the third day of May was possessed of certain goods which on the fourth day of May came to the defendant’s hands, who afterwards, to wit, on the first day of May converted them, the scilicet was rejected as surplusage. Cro. Jac. 428; and vide 6 Binn. 15; 3 Saund. 291, note 1, and the cases there cited. This word is sometimes abbreviated, ss. or sst.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law says the same – enter ss here and you get the same result as in the paper version (but there’s no entry for scilicet):

ss
Latin scilicet that is to say
specifically (used in the statement of venue which follows the caption of a legal document and esp. between the name of the state and the particular subdivision (as county))

Actually, this information is hidden in my earlier entry. T. Carter in the third comment mentions that example. Here are two uses of ss. to illustrate the problem:

1. State of Maryland ss. County of Price George’s

2. District of Columbia, ss.:
John Rand, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he has read the foregoing bill by him subscribed and knows the contents…

In 1, ss. can be taken to mean ‘more specifically’. In 2, it can’t. The layout is also different, that is, it doesn’t look as if the subdistrict has simply been omitted.

At all events, whether the interpretation is 1. ‘scilicet’ or 2. ‘some meaningless letters that have been copied mindlessly over the years’, the ss. can be omitted in a translation into German.

World Cup / Weltmeisterschaft

Some blogs have taken the moral high ground and at least attempted to avoid mentioning the football. I haven’t managed this, but of course I haven’t got enough time to follow it properly. I regret having to work on Sunday and thus not going into Nuremberg to see the Mexican fans in their sombreros (and the Iranians, of course).

Anyway, you don’t see football everywhere. So I won’t touch the topic. Laugenbrötchen for lunch:

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Outside Nordostbad:

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In the Germanisches Nationalmuseum:

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This was a competition for schools. In front: Eckball:

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Outside the museum:

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At the Ehebrunnen:

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And at last there’s some reason for the flagpole holders on the buildings here:

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Death by sausage / Bockwursttötung

This is a bit late, but in answer to the person who asked me recently how you could kill someone with a Bockwurst – surely it was too soft to hit someone over the head with? No, it was suffocation. Yahoo News:

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German police have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a woman with a Bockwurst sausage.
Prosecutors and police said the 50-year-old was arrested after the discovery of a woman’s body in an apartment in Zwickau, eastern Germany. They said she had choked on a Bockwurst, which is a popular large German sausage.
The prosecutors said the man had given a patchy account of events, acknowledging that he may have “administered” a Bockwurst to the woman.

That was ‘verabreicht’.

Themes of German talk shows / Themen deutscher Talkshows

Die Zeit 25, 1998

Morning and afternoon talk shows on German private TV: all the topics in three months of 1998.

Diese Liste der Themen deutscher Talk-Shows umfaßt drei Fernsehmonate: vom 2. März bis zum 28. Mai 1998. Erfaßt wurden die Vormittags- und Nachmittagssendungen von RTL, Sat.1 und ProSieben mit den Moderatorinnen und Moderatoren Bärbel Schäfer, Ilona Christen, Hans Meiser, Jörg Pilawa, Vera Int-Veen, Sonja Zietlow und Arabella Kiesbauer. Die Reihenfolge entspricht der Chronologie.

Mama, wann bekomme ich endlich einen Papa? Hilfe! Ich finde keine Lehrstelle! Seitensprung – Das verzeihe ich dir nie! Hilfe, ich hab’ meine Tage. Deine Freunde bringen dich noch in den Knast. Frauen schlagen zurück. Verliebt, verlobt, verheiratet und trotzdem allein. Verzeih mir bitte – ich hab’ mit deinem Freund geschlafen. Ich hasse meine Schwester! Mit dir blamiert man sich nur. Vorspiel! – Nein Danke! Jetzt dreht ihr Teenies völlig durch. Viele Frösche, aber kein Prinz. Manchmal hilft nur abhauen – Wenn Kinder ausreißen. Meine schwerste Aufgabe – Ich mußte eine Todesnachricht überbringen. Mein Mann hat eine Geliebte. Lieber schön und dumm als schlau und häßlich. Mein Weg auf die schiefe Bahn. Mädchen sind eingebildete Zicken. Schlank um jeden Preis. Ich will ein Kind – aber keinen Mann. Bitte sprechen Sie langsam – Ich bin blond! Mein Partner ist viel älter! Na und? Bitte bring mich in den Knast! Biester und Schlampen – So bekommst du jeden Mann.

Mummy, when will I get a daddy? Help! I can’t get an apprenticeship! An affair – I’ll never forgive you! Help, I’ve got my period. With friends like that you’ll finish up in prison. Women hit back. In love, engaged, married and still alone. Please forgive me – I slept with your friend. Foreplay! – No thanks! Now you teenies have gone right round the bend. A lot of frogs, but no prince. Sometimes clearing off is the only solution – When children run away. My hardest task – I had to give someone news of a death. My husband has a lover. Better beautiful and stupid than clever and ugly. My path off the straight and narrow. Girls are stuck-up cows. Slim at any price. I want a baby – but not a husband. Please speak slowly – I’m blonde! My partner is much older! So what? Please put me in prison! Bitches and sluts – How to catch any man.

Ali Smith on translators / Weidenfeld Übersetzungspreis

Letztes Jahr ging der Oxford Weidenfeld Übersetzungspreis an Denis Jackson, der nach und nach die Werke von Theodor Storm übersetzt.
Suchen Sie eine Übersetzung von Storm für Ihre englischsprachige Freunde – hier ist sie.

The winner of the Oxford Weidenfeld Prize for translation has just been announced: Magda Szabo, The Door translated by Len Rix. Here’s the shortlist.

Ali Smith (I’ve just read a novel of hers, The Accidental), who was one of the judges, writes on translation in the Times Online today.

bq. Of all the books published in the UK, only 3 to 4 per cent are translations. What’s the matter with us? Don’t we like to look at anything but ourselves? Are we so vain? Do we simply not care, not want to know what’s happening in the literatures of the rest of the world? It’s embarrassing. It’s like a terrible leftover of imperialism. Thank God for the publishers who take chances. Thank God for prizes like The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, an award for translations into English from any living European language, which “aims to honour the craft of translation and to recognise its cultural importance”. It’s a prize that also sets out to consider, in parallel, the heft of the original writing and the quality and importance of its translation into English.

The Times doesn’t say much about the winning novel, so here’s a review. It’s apparently somewhat autobiographical, about the relationship between a woman writer and her cleaner:

bq. Writing The Door after Emerence’s death (for which she irrationally blames herself), Szabó states: “I know now, what I didn’t then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways; and that one cannot prescribe the form it should take for anyone else.” There is much in this story that will bewilder and perplex (perhaps something of the mercurial Hungarian mindset is lost in translation), but The Door is a valuable document of a vital relationship.

(Thanks to Luxus Linguae)