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’.

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.

This shop has a very catholic range of animal food (click to enlarge):

Close-up:

And some earplugs to the right:

I know you’re all looking for the World Cup angle.

As Völker Weber would say, ‘It’s “Make your own caption” time’.

Number 1 threw me.

You got 11 right!

Saint Paul could hardly have done better

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)

Evan Schaeffer links to a download site for a law review article (make that ‘not a law review article’) by Christopher M. Fairman on the legal contexts of a word that bots would love to find on my site.
He also sets out the table of contents of the article.

Download the article

(Originally via Boing Boing)