Anna Steegmann teaches writing in New York. She has an article in the New York Times about being an illegal German immigrant in New York, scarcely able to speak English.

It was a Saturday afternoon, a time when German cities turn into graveyards. But in the park, blasting radios battled one another for dominance, elderly men played speed chess with youthful contenders, and dope peddlers, fire eaters and aspiring folk singers competed for the public’s attention. Children on the swings shrieked with delight, while hyperactive small dogs engaged in rough-and-tumble play.
I was 25, love-struck and delusional, and I decided to stay. Ignoring all the illegal immigrant’s red flags (no health insurance, no green card, no work, no savings), I cashed in my return ticket.

Those Saturday afternoons are not as bad as they used to be. They are a bit like that, but the feeling of deep depression and everything dead has gone. Some shops here stay open till 8 p.m. It’s not New York, though.

(Via The Lexicographer’s Rules)

Here’s an aspect of the Madeleine McCann story that hasn’t received a detailed airing and sounds less fishy than the rest of it. We read of two specially trained sniffer dogs from Britain who were flown into Portugal. Elsewhere they are described as the only two dogs in the world who can detect that a corpse has been in a room.

In unseren Versuchen konnten Leichenhunde sogar noch nach einem Jahr einen Blutstropfen aufspüren. Auch, wenn die Stelle sorgfältig gereinigt wurde, riechen die Hunde das Blut. Dabei ist die benötigte Menge minimal, oft sehen wir mit freiem Auge beim besten Willen keinerlei Spuren, die Hunde melden aber trotzdem einen Fund.

(Interview on sniffer dogs, SZ)

Die Zeitung „Correio da Manh㓠ging am Freitag am weitesten mit der Meldung, dass die vor einem Monat aus England an die Algarve gebrachten Spürhunde „Leichengeruch“ an der Kleidung der Mutter und dem Stofftier Madeleines, das die Mutter häufig mitführt, entdeckt hätten.

(FAZ)

As far as I can tell, the two famous dogs are Eddie (a springer spaniel) and Frankie (a border collie), of South Yorkshire police. They are called victim recovery dogs (Leichenhunde; I suppose victim means a dead person). However, the two dogs who went to Portugal were Eddie and Keela (another springer spaniel). This accords with the reports that one dog was trained to sniff corpses and one trained to sniff minute amounts of blood.

Here is a picture of Frankie – who did not go to Portugal – looking as keen as me at the beginning of a hard day’s translating:

I was disappointed by the information on Dog News, where the only story dates from May.

There is a photo of Eddie and some more background on this Cork fm radio site. Here is Keela from the South Yorkshire police Dog Diary site, which has Keela’s diary for children:

I spoke too soon when I said green had been displaced by bronze in the pedestrian zone.

Since the redesign, virtually all facilities for dogs have disappeared.

CD. Reinhören (amazon.de did not work for me)

From my email:

DORES enthält neue Einträge
******************************
DORES, unsere Dokumentation zu Recht und Sprache unter http://www.dores.admin.ch enthält ab sofort (7. September 2007) neue Einträge. Zudem stellt sich DORES seit Sommer 2006 im neuen, vereinheitlichten Kleid des Internetauftritts der schweizerischen Bundesverwaltung dar. Ein Besuch von Ihnen würde uns freuen, aber auch jede Anregung, jede Kritik.

Some online goodies were revealed here (not yet read): Brigitte Zypries, the German Minister of Justice, gave a speech on legal German at a symposium on language and law in Berlin in November 2006:

Zypries, Brigitte: Juristendeutsch: Handwerkszeug oder Herrschaftsmittel? In: Der Sprachdienst 1 / 2007, 2-8.
Die deutsche Bundesmnisterin der Justiz hielt diesen Vortrag am Symposion “Sprache und Recht” im November 2006 in Berlin. Sie kündigt darin unter anderem ein Projekt zur stärkeren redaktionellen Begleitung von Gesetzgebungsprojekten in der Bundesgesetzgebung in Deutschland an.

This can be found online too.

There’s a link to an article on English as the Language of Law in Switzerland.

Vogt, Nedim Peter / Drolshammer, Jens: English as the Language of Law and the 2005 Swiss Law Bibliography. In: LeGes – Gesetzgebung & Evaluation 2 / 2007, 229-237.
Link: http://www.leges.ch

And there’s a book by Hannes Kniffka (to be published shortly) I would be interested in:

Kniffka, Hannes: Working in Language and Law. A German Perspective. Basingstoke (UK) / New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2007, 304 S.

Stu’s Views – Law & Legal Cartoons really is very funny. There are cartoons on all kinds of legal topics.

At Kater Verlag you can find the details of this book and if you click on Entscheidungshilfe you will find an extract. Note the large number of definitions given.

(EN>DE is available too)

Wörterbuch Gebäudetechnik DE-EN, 89.00EUR
Autor: Bucksch
Verlag: Fraunhofer
Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
Wörterbuch Gebäudetechnik DE-EN
744 Seiten
35.000 Begriffe zu Heizung, Klima, Aufzug, Rolltreppen, Rohrleitungs-, und Schaltungstechnik, Feldbustechnik für die Elektrik, Sicherheitsmanagement, Facility Management, befahrbare Fassaden und andere neuzeitliche technische Einrichtungen bringt der neue Bucksch. Didaktisch wertvoll, indem Begriffe in den Zusammenhang gestellt werden und auch durch die Zuordnung zum amerikanischen oder britischen Sprachgebrauch.

Herbert Bucksch’s dictionaries are thick and detailed (this is beginning to sound like email spam). I found his dictionary of architecture extremely useful when I first translated stuff about modern buildings, whereas construction law, land law and regional policy has never been of any use. Most are out of print now, but he is still producing them. I don’t know this one.

Mobbing is another topic I’ve discussed before (here and here).

This is a word that English speakers regard as a German invention and German speakers regard as an English invention. It did in fact start in English, but it was very widely taken over in German in a slightly different sense. Apparently it was not Konrad Lorenz who used it first, but Frank Finn, in English, in 1919.

Es wird manchmal fälschlicherweise behauptet, der Österreicher Konrad Lorenz habe den Begriff erfunden. Das stimmt nicht — das Oxford English Dictionary nennt als früheste Verwendung das Buch Bird Behaviour des englischen Ornithologen Frank Finn von 1919. Lorenz beschrieb das Verhalten in Das sogenannte Böse (1963), verwendete dort aber die Begriffe Ausstoßen und soziale Verteidigungsaktion. Der Begriff Mobbing taucht dann erst in Übersetzungen dieses Werks auf, die zur Verbreitung des Begriffs in der Verhaltensforschung beigetragen haben könnten. Damit wäre er der erste deutsche Muttersprachler, der sich, zumindest indirekt, in die Geschichte dieses Wortes eingemischt hätte. Der zweite, viel entscheidendere Beitrag stammt auf jeden Fall von einem deutschen Muttersprachler: der schwedische Psychologieprofessor Heinz Leymann, ein gebürtiger Deutscher, borgte sich den Begriff Mobbing Mitte der achtziger Jahre aus und gab ihm die uns bekannte Bedeutung.

So says the Bremer Sprachblog. The word started in English as a reference to bird behaviour (to other birds, rather than the Hitchcock effect), entered German, was used by a German in Sweden in a wider sense, and thence returned to English.

Anatol links to a Guardian article indicating that a need is felt for the word in English too.

This depth of understanding seems to be beyond the reach of the Aktion Lebendiges Deutsch, whose four musketeers are looking for a real German alternative this month.

About a year ago I mentioned James Nolan’s interpreter training handbook (with links and comments). Now I hear that the second edition has appeared.

Bibliographic information Series: Professional Interpreting in the Real World
March 2005 format 210 x 148mm 320 pp
Hbk ISBN 1-85359-791-0 c. £69.95 / US$124.95/ CAN$174.95
Pbk ISBN 1-85359-790-2 c. £26.95/ US$49.95/ CAN$69.95
Subject (BIC): Translation and Interpretation (CFP) Level: Research, Professional (R) Territory: World
MM Subject interests: 700 MM Series: PIRW

orders@multilingual-matters.com
www.multilingual-matters.com

I don’t know this book myself, but I have a publication notice from the author with more details that I can send to anyone who would like it.

Since the last entry attracted comments, here are two pictures of the Palast der Republik to confirm the comments.

And can anyone tell me what the not-quite-legible ad in the last picture is for? It says something like ‘Der Beweis, dass auch Männer mehrere Höhepunkte gleichzeitig haben können…’ Of course, I just took it for the atmosphere and didn’t even notice the text.