Thank goodness they’re still selling it.

Goodbye Kompatibilitätsmodus.

The Guardian (and the Telegraph) report that Lucy Fairbrother’s mother thinks her weblog was tampered with:

The posting, A Short Stay in Tibet, begins with a description of life there and turns into a polemic against China, but appears to have been clumsily changed to read more sympathetically. It reads: “I admit that I have been under much influence of militant Free Tibet organisations back home. What China is doing now, and what China HAS done, are so different, and I am angry with myself for not realising the distinction before now.”

…Her mother, Linda, a TV journalist, said: “This certainly sounds unlike anything Lucy would have written. I saw the original and I certainly have no memory of anything like that figuring in it. It doesn’t sound like her phraseology. She read classics, she writes beautifully and this doesn’t sound at all like her style, quite apart from her sentiments. I would imagine it’s been done today. Students for a Free Tibet have in the past had tampering with their own internal emails.”

How beautifully Lucy writes is for readers to decide, but if the Chinese have altered the weblog, they also managed to alter the Wayback Machine – see here. Very clever, those Chinese.

LATER NOTE: My suspicions are shared by this letter to the Guardian today (thanks to Peter).

Via LAWgical:

Bernd Schmitz (multimedia blog) found the general terms of business of 1 & 1 as a potential ISP heavy going and had the idea of creating a word cloud from them at Wordle.

I tried the same thing with Virgin broadband terms and conditions (UK):

I suppose a contrast between two English or two German sets might be more interesting.

Superficially, I note that the English contract is addressed to you, not that the word springs to the eye in the cloud, whereas the German is in the third person, hence der Kunde (the customer). Also, the German has portmanteau words like Mindestvertragslaufzeit (minimum contract term) (and more abbreviations than the English, such as z.B. and ggf, the former with a full stop in the middle and the latter without). The German berechtigt and verpflichtet match the English may and must (no shall here). Might be worth thinking about when translating from one to the other, although one doesn’t always want to do a complete adaptation.

I see from the Aticom (translators’ association) website a seminar on legal English in October and November – I know nothing about it or the speaker, but I imagine some readers might be interested, and I see it’s limited to twenty participants:

Typische Rechtsbegriffe aus dem Zivilrecht mit Schwerpunkt auf Vertragssprache, Gerichtsverfahren und Familienrecht mit englischen und deutschen Beispielstexten

Veranstalter:
ATICOM Fachverband der Berufsübersetzer und Berufsdolmetscher e.V:

Referentin:
Claudia Butterly
Frau Butterly ist Volljuristin und staatlich anerkannte Übersetzerin für Englisch (gerichtlich ermächtigt durch das OLG Köln) und hat ein Fernstudium am britischem College “Law for Business” absolviert. Sie arbeitet als freiberufliche Übersetzerin und Dolmetscherin und ist seit sieben Jahren als Englischtrainerin in der Erwachsenenbildung tätig. Erfahrungen in juristischen Übersetzungen konnte sie insbesondere während ihrer Arbeit für Anwälte und Patentanwälte sammeln. Frau Butterly lebt in deutsch/schottischem Umfeld.

I didn’t read the last sentence till after I saw the following:

Wie übersetze ich “anhängig”, “Anfechtung”, “enter appearance” oder “condescendence”?

Condescendence is clearly Scottish! I suppose a deutsch-schottisches Umfeld is what they call it if you’re surrounded by Germans and Scots.

An etymological curiosity. At Chez Pim there is an entry, with photo, on Pennsylvania Dutch pot pie, also known as bot boi. It appears that bot boi is regarded as archaic German, but I can’t see what it might have meant.

Still curious about the term bot boi, I texted Thomas the (real) German boy to see if he knew what it meant. “Potpourri”, he replied instantly. Hmm. Odd. “How about something regarding food, or perhaps something phonetically similar but not the exact spelling”, I tried again. “Ah, it’s an antiquated expression for a thick stew, which in modern German is eintopf”, he explained. Eintopf, according to Thomas, has a starch element from mashed beans, peas, potatoes, or lentils, which are cooked with chunks of meat to make a thick stew. I suppose when the Pennsylvania Dutch migrated here from Germany they imported the idea but adapted it to the more readily available ingredients, namely flour and corn.

This Thomas sounds like a few men I have known: he always knows the answer. But how exactly does he get the link from Eintopf (casserole, literally ‘one pot’) to bot boi?

Pot pie is a term I suspect is mainly American, but I may be wrong (am querying at wordorigins), meaning a doublecrust pie.

This Pennsylvania Dutch pot pie is a stew with noodles made in a pot on the stove. Apparently such noodles are also called dumplings elsewhere – slippery dumplings as opposed to fluffy dumplings. (The English dumplings I know have a raising agent and are cooked on top of a stew in this way).

Wikipedia:

In the Pennsylvania Dutch region, there is a dish called “bott boi” by Deitsh-speaking natives and is mispronounced “pot pie” by English speakers in the area. This dish is sometimes referred to as “slippery noodle pot pie” to distinguish it from the true pie form of pot pie. Bott Boi is a stew, usually made of a combination of chicken, ham, beef, or wild game with square-cut egg noodles, potatoes, and a healthy stock of onion, optional celery and/or carrots, and parsley. Bouillon is sometimes used to enhance the flavor.[2] The egg noodles are often made from scratch from flour, eggs, salt (optional) and water. Some recipes use leavening agents such as baking powder.

LATER NOTE: I have come to the conclusion that the Pennsylvania Dutch borrowed the English term pot pie and adapted it to their dialect. At Wordorigins, Aldiboronti kindly quoted the definitions and first citations from the Oxford English Dictionary (mine is on my old computer):

pot-pie, n.

1. Brit. regional. A dish made from cubed meat, covered with a layer of dough and stewed in a pot. rare.

1702 J. K. tr. F. Massialot Court & Country Cook 268 Tunnies..may be bak’d in a Pot-pie [Fr. Pâté en pot], putting the Flesh chopt small into a Pot, or earthen Pan, with burnt butter and white Wine.

2. U.S. Originally: a pie filled with meat, game, fruit, etc., and cooked in a pot or a deep pie pan. Now also more generally: a pie, typically with a savoury filling of meat and vegetables.

1823 J. F. COOPER Pioneers i, The snow-birds are flying round your own door, where you may..shoot enough for a pot-pie any day.

3. U.S. A meat fricassee with dumplings. rare.

1890 Cent. Dict., Pot-pie,..A dish of stewed meat with pieces of steamed pastry or dumplings served in it; a fricassee of meat with dumplings.

I think the Pennsylvania Dutch were thinking of the third definition. It refers to dumplings rather than noodles, but Googling indicates that some noodles are called dumplings in some states.