Legal translation song on YouTube/Lied einer juristischen Übersetzerin auf YouTube

Sharon Neeman, whom I’ve heard of but don’t know, has a wonderful song about legal translation on YouTube. It’s copyright 2006, but new to me (thanks to Per).

The clock was close to quitting time, my desk was almost clear
I thought perhaps I’d slip around the corner for a beer
But the phone rang and I answered and a friendly voice said ‘Hi’.
It was the secretary of a legal firm nearby.

She said, ‘Oh please excuse me caling this late in the day,
But we have a new petition in a case that’s underway.
Can you translate it tomorrow – any time by five will do –
Cause we wouldn’t want to give the work to anyone but you.’

It’s only five thousand words…

Incidentally, a normal daily translation figure is widely thought to be 2000 words, at least from English to German.

4 thoughts on “Legal translation song on YouTube/Lied einer juristischen Übersetzerin auf YouTube

  1. What a strange thing to write ‘I don’t give a shit’. Why post anything about the popculture in Germany at the time and not care where it was from? Especially as it makes such a socio political difference as to where it was made and who it was sold to!

    • Yes indeed, as widely commented on the two sites. One can only assume that the heading ‘DDR’ attracts readers and got the entry reported on Boing Boing. And then the writer tries to support the title by saying that East Germany had the DM in 1993, thus showing complete ignorance of the term DDR.

  2. For me the Big Picture is that there is apparently a world out there of Cherman dinosaur and/or truck pulp, previously unknown to me. That is very big news!

    But:

    Still, this one may very well have been from East Germany, considering it was published in 1993.

    I’m at a loss to know what this could mean. Bastei are not and have not been from the DDR, before or after (or indeed during) 1993.

    If it means that the author and/or artiste could have been, well the author could have been Oostrian or Belgian for all we know, and the artist from anywhere.

    The original blogger seems to imagine that Cherman (male-oriented) pulp is typically set in Chermany, which suggests a frankly astonishing level of ignorance: it is of course mostly Westerns!

    • What I wonder is whether there are more of these at medium-sized German railway stations than large plushy ones.
      I thought the whole thing might be American.
      Now that VG Wort, which collects royalties for authors in Germany, will pay if a blog entry has a large number of hits, I am going to have to consider this kind of deceptive use of titles.

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