I was wondering how to translate buchhalterisch runden, aka kaufmännisch runden.

I know what it means – it means rounding up or down, literally in the ‘accountants’ style’.

Here I do think I can rely on the German Wikipedia:

Das Kaufmännische Runden geschieht wie folgt:

* Ist die Ziffer an der ersten wegfallenden Dezimalstelle eine 0,1,2,3 oder 4, dann wird abgerundet.
* Ist die Ziffer an der ersten wegfallenden Dezimalstelle eine 5,6,7,8 oder 9, dann wird aufgerundet.

Diese Rundungsregel wird durch die Norm DIN 1333 beschrieben. Das Runden wird so auch häufig in der Schule gelehrt.

The
English Wikipedia is self-described as unreliable, but says:

Round-to-even method

This method, also known as unbiased rounding, convergent rounding, statistician’s rounding, Dutch rounding, Gaussian rounding, or bankers’ rounding, exactly replicates the common method of rounding except when the digit(s) following the rounding digit starts with a five and has no non-zero digits after it.

Note that, according to this article, this is not identical to the ‘common method’. See the talk page for the dispute, and also three discussions on LEO. One suggestion there is ’round to nearest ($)’, but that is ambiguous.

This led to quite a discussion on two lists. One opinion is just to write ’round’. That doesn’t seem precise enough to me, in a contract, or, as was also suggested, in building specifications. But to define it precisely would take a lot of words. Others want to translate buchhalterisch or kaufmännisch literally. On top of that, it is apparently met most frequently in accounting, but that was not my context.

Ben Teague was one of the great stalwarts on FLEFO in CompuServe, which I joined in 1994 or thereabouts. He translated physics, but his great passion was amateur theatre. His wife Fran taught/teaches literature at the university. His website gives some impression of all this.

Now I learn from Michael Wahlster, via Twitter, that Ben was shot dead on Saturday, when he was standing outside the theatre with two other people, by the husband of one of them. Here’s an article on the shooting, and here another with more information about Ben and a photo.

Police said Marie Bruce, Tom Tanner and Ben Teague were all outside the community theater when Bruce’s estranged husband came by with two hand guns and open fired.

“Marie was the president of this organization for many, many years that acted and directed, (and) has two beautiful children,” said victim’s friend Steve Elliott-Gower. “(Tom), like Ben, he was always down at the theater helping build somebody else’s set. Ben Teague was the life and soul of the organization — very talented guy. He must have put in tens of thousands of hours building and designing sets.

I must admit I thought of him as old, but he was only one year older than me. He probably just did more! I am sorry I didn’t meet Ben. The same goes for another Flefoid, Alicia Gordon, who was only 53 when she died.

Further links: a personal account by Ben’s step-brother (since his 92-year-old father married Ben’s mother) and by the Austin Area Translators and Interpreters Association.

The Bessere Mitte had wooden models of the shopping centre proposed by Sonae Sierra:#

and the alternative they propose.

The top model corresponds to the three white blocks in the bottom model, which leaves Rudolf-Breitscheid-Straße open. This was at the Fürth Stadtfest yesterday. A couple talking to the campaigners felt that a 15,000 square metre shopping centre would be too small, and would not miss the listed buildings that would have to go (or be partly hidden).

I was pleased to hear recently that some of the independent shopkeepers have a parallel initiative. That shows that the opponents of the scheme aren’t just the few people who appeared on the stage at the civic hall meeting. That’s the Arbeitskreis kritische Einzelhändler Fürth.

I think they want us to stop running over cyclists here.

I don’t suppose we’ll have to wait long for Susan Boyle. They just have to cut some footage of listeners with Telekom devices.

This was a week ago, on Easter Sunday, when I got a closer shot of a muskrat (Bisamratte) while hiding behind a tree.

If this had been Detroit, it would have been very appropriate, as there is a rumour that Catholics there were permitted to classify the muskrat as a fish and eat it on Fridays in Lent.

Blogwiese often reloads earlier entries. I must have missed this one: Dialekt ist Privatsache in Deutschland.

In Germany, people do often speak both a dialect and standard German (Hochdeutsch). But the dialect is regarded as a private matter – not the case in Switzerland. In Germany, dialect is spoken at home and with your friends, not in public. The teacher speaks standard German, and the pupils believe their dialect is inferior.

Linguee is a site that is collecting a bilingual corpus of texts on the internet.

The idea is that you enter a German word and the site returns pairs of sentences containing that word in German and English.

I looked for a recent problem, Evidenzfall. It wasn’t there (unsurprisingly – the site is new).

I then looked for Evidenz. IMO Evidenz is not always evidence, but can have to do with things being plain or manifest. I translated Evidenzfall as case of a plainly void administrative act, and I came to this conclusion mainly with the help of German online definitions and in particular a textbook on German administrative law.

The hits I get with Linguee almost exclusively have Evidenz, bold, in the German half and evidence, bold, in the English half. ‘More results…’ produced more examples, without bold. I didn’t see any examples from administrative law.

One result was given three stars out of three (most had two):

Die Evidenz, dass auch Pflanzen Stammzellen haben müssen
The evidence that plants also have stem cells

Note, incidentally, that the translation omitted ‘müssen’ – probably OK here. But one obviously can’t rely on translations being good – when one searches the Web, it is more in a spirit of hope.

Certainly some of the translations were not good. ‘We will keep your application in evidence’? It rather looks to me as if the program is designed to look for ‘evidence’ when I enter ‘Evidenz’.

I’m oversimplifying it, because this problem arises only when I enter Evidenz. If I enter evidence, I get a very useful page giving a variety of equivalents, from which I can choose. And it’s not just English words this happens with – the same happens with Aufgabe. So perhaps my Evidenz is too obscure.

I do think, however, that the examples given have been collected and sorted in advance. This gives the service of LEO or dict.cc. It interposes a brain of some sort between me and the corpus, without the useful forum discussions found on other sites.

What impressions do other people have?

(Via Übersetzer-Logbuch – originally via Twitter)

The End
When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

From Now We Are Six, by A.A. Milne

I suppose it isn’t the end. Although when I started there were scarcely any translation weblogs, and now there must be hundreds. Most of them with a cheerful positive attitude to life. I’m still working on that.