Mystery of the week: what has translation quality control and DIN EN 15038 got to do with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson? I think this is a question even Sherlock Holmes (I happened to watch a DVD of The Hound of the Baskervilles with Basil Rathbone yesterday) couldn’t solve.

MDÜ – Fachzeitschrift für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer (it has just dropped the name Mitteilungen für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer)
For non-members of the BDÜ 10 euros an issue and 50 euros a year (5 issues) from BDÜ

It appears that the image is a doctored version of a public domain illustration at Wikimedia Commons. The original drawing has the text ‘Holmes gave me a sketch of the events’. Maybe this illustrates the brief train journey taken in The Hound of the Baskervilles, before Holmes and Watson sneak back across the moor.

The problem is that the drawing evokes quite inappropriate associations among English readers.

IATE, the EU terminology database that is the successor to Eurodicautom, is now available to all online. This was promised for the second half of March. (It gave me ten different German versions of affidavit).

Not what I usually think of as bad translation.

It seems a good idea to pay for one’s underground ticket, but the consequences of not paying are worse than I imagined – a criminal record and no future.

Meanwhile at Nymphenburg (click to enlarge):

And then again:

On marrying a foreigner in Kazhakstan:

For some reason, my relatives decided that I’m getting married to a millionaire and asked him to pay “kalym” (traditional “payment” for a bride) with a helicopter, for grandpa, since he is old and a veteran of World War II and apparently it’s hard for him to take a bus. For you, it may be funny, but it wasn’t funny for my relatives, and especially for my grandpa who really hoped to “sell” his granddaughter for a helicopter. And then I understood that I have to save my future husband from the “claws” of my relatives, or else something bad might happen. When my grandpa found out that he won’t get a helicopter, and that a maximum on what my relatives can count on is a bicycle, they were really upset, and didn’t even try to hide it.

Translation is not always necessary:

When Kazakhs and foreigners get really drunk, they can understand each other without a translator.

Leila via Global Voices

It’s terrible the stereotypical image of Bavaria that is presented abroad – almost identical to the real thing.

(via Cobwebs of Petty Inquisitiveness)