A translator’s day/Arbeit und Pausen

Posted on 9 July 2008 by MMarks

I often wonder if I’m not too lazy to be a translator:

My typical day begins with a walk through the woods to school. Besides being a very serene start to the day not least for the dog, and especially if I have been at my desk since 5 am it has the additional benefit of allowing me to contra off any chocolate consumed during a sedentary days translation and also to mull over any headlines or anything else requiring quiet contemplation. I often use this time to give translations or editing a final read-through manic multi-tasker that I am.

A day in the life of a translator, from the site of thebigword

German language not romantic/Mosley spricht “Deutsch”

Posted on 8 July 2008 by MMarks

Max Mosley is suing the News of the World for breach of privacy. They clandestinely filmed him in a sado-masochistic party.
Mosley denies that it had a Nazi theme.

However, it has come out that he was speaking German, also referred to as ‘cod German’.

The Scotsman reports:

MOTOR racing chief Max Mosley told the High Court that he spoke German during a sado-masochistic session with five women because the “harsh-sounding” language suited his dominant role. … He said that the role-play “prison” scenario, which is at the centre of his breach of privacy action against the News of the World, involved him and woman B, a fellow German speaker, being dominant to submissive characters who could not understand them.
…
“German also somehow sounds appropriate for a bossy dominant character. It is a harsh-sounding – rather than a romantic – language.”

One wonders what his German sounded like:

He said that if he had asked for a Nazi theme, he would have been deeply disappointed to be greeted, as he was, with the phrase “Welcome to Chelsea” rather than “Brandenburg Tur”.
…
Asked about his speaking “cod German as though he was in a poor World War Two movie”, he said it had nothing to do with the war.

(via Schifo at www.flefo.org)

LATER NOTE: as indicated in the comments, Mosley spent 2 years from the age of 13 (his first regular schooling) at a school in Stein an der Traun (Wikipedia), so at least at the age of 15 he spoke fluent German.

According to the Independent of July 10:

The editor agreed with the suggestion of Mr Mosley’s QC that “in fairness it might have been instructive to have had [the video of the orgy] translated by a German speaker”, after the paper alleged the S&M session had a concentration camp theme.
…
The editor admitted that no one with knowledge of German watched the video before the paper went to press. This was despite the fact that one of the scenarios featured in the video – which the paper claimed was recreating a concentration camp scene – was conducted mostly in German.

LATER NOTE: Mosley won the case – see later entry.

Paul Potts/Deutsche Telekom

Posted on 8 July 2008 by MMarks

Deutsche Telekom is using a video of Paul Potts as a TV advertisement, with the slogan Erleben, was verbindet (literally, Experience what links (people)). The clip is of him

Funny – I didn’t know Deutsche Telekom had anything to do with his win. And it seems weird to use such a well-known event. But I suppose not that many Germans had seen the clip. Still, how can a company base its advertising on something that’s been on YouTube for months?

Vom Handyverkäufer zum Opernstar

Paul Potts blog

Oldies refused playgrounds/”Seniorenspielplatz” tabu

Posted on 7 July 2008 by MMarks

The Nürnberger Nachrichten reports today (with illustration) that the term Seniorenspielplatz is banned and replaced by Bewegungspark für alle Generationen. Thus the press office of the City of Nuremberg (could these be the people who coined Knut war gestern?)

The term seems still to exist on this site, which lists such places throughout Germany.

Doughnut/Berliner

Posted on 5 July 2008 by MMarks

I was a jelly donut

This topic has frequently been mentioned here – for instance in this 2005 entry. But it refuses to die the death. It is really entrenched in the USA.

paperpools took it up recently, linking to the NYT book blog, and fortunately this led to a useful entry in the Bremer Sprachblog.

Paper Cuts talked to Michael Jennings, the chairman of the German department at Princeton University.

After you wrote to me, I did a bit of informal research myself — talking to lots of friends in Berlin. And their responses were all over the map. Certainly the most common and accepted way to say “I’m a resident of Berlin” is “Ich bin Berliner,” i.e. without the indefinite article. But, for many speakers, it is by no means incorrect or ungrammatical to say “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Some of my respondents in fact applauded Kennedy on his nuanced use of German, since for them the sentence without the indefinite article implies that the speaker is a native Berliner, while the sentence with “ein” suggests either more recent residence in Berlin or even solidarity with its inhabitants (which was clearly Kennedy / Sorenson’s intention).

Uppercase ß/Neuer Buchstabe

Posted on 5 July 2008 by MMarks

Some topics I mentioned earlier have been taken up elsewhere recently.

Uppercase ß: earlier entry

I was a bit early on this. The way for capital ß has now been opened (Tagesspiegel)

Düsseldorf/ Berlin – Die letzte Lücke im deutschen Alphabet ist geschlossen – zumindest technisch. Das ß gibt es nun auch als Großbuchstaben erstmals verankert in den internationalen Zeichensätzen ISO-10646 und Unicode 5.1. Es hat dort den Platz mit der Bezeichnung 1E9E. Das bestätigten das Deutsche Institut für Normung (DIN) und die Internationale Organisation für Normung (ISO). Die Änderung werde in Kürze veröffentlicht, sagte ein ISO-Sprecher. Damit hatte ein Antrag der DIN-Leute, eine Norm für das große ß zu schaffen, teilweise Erfolg.

As Cherry point out, it’s not so easy on the keyboard.

Transblawg

Weblog on German-English legal translation, no longer from Fürth

Monthly Archives: July 2008