LATER NOTE: This is what it looked like on 26th January 2010:

Simon Singh has been hampered by English libel law and requests signatures for his petition.

National Petition for Libel Law Reform

This doesn’t just affect people in the UK, as England is becoming a libel tourist destination.

Wikipedia on Singh:

In 2008, Singh was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association for criticising their activities in a column in The Guardian.[1] A backlash to the ongoing lawsuit has resulted in the filing of formal complaints of false advertising against more than 500 individual chiropractors within one 24 hour period, one national chiropractic organization ordering its members to take down their websites,[2] and Nature Medicine noting that the case has gathered wide support for Singh, as well as prompting calls for the reform of English libel laws.[3]

Ernst and Singh’s Trick or Treatment is a guide to research on alternative treatments – a good read – I keep it at hand. Here is a list of the translations into other languages.

It looks as if the city council wants to counter the impression that nobody ought to sit down in the pedestrian precinct.

Or was this the plan all along? (The ‘water’ beneath is solid ice).

Stolen coffee cake bei Criggo.

Note the comments: Hans knows better.

This is over a year old – pre-Obama – but somehow I missed it till now:

Das tut gut: Entspammung vor dem Wochenende

Dear Thoxan, I would like to express an interest in working for you as your German>English translation agency. I am a lifelong speaker of American English, but have also done extensive translation work into British English. I was an honor student in college and have a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree in German. I also spent a year in college as an exchange student in Giessen, Germany.

This unsolicited advertising email was sent twice, and the sender became abusive after a response to the second sending.

The Observer reviews Manhood, by Mels van Driel.

And as for rigour, well I am no urologist, but I do doubt whether researchers really found that the “average diameter of the fully erect penis was approximately 121mm”. That is nearly five inches or about the same size, in cross section, as a compact disc. A simple mistake, I’m sure, substituting diameter for circumference, but such things ought to matter in this book.

Earlier in the review:

And yet, even when one has finished the task of absolving him and his translator from their many sins of style and punctuation, Van Driel’s book remains, by any normal measure, a botched job.

Yet no other example of translator’s errors are given, and the punctuation may be down to the editor. At amazon.co.uk you can look inside the book and see if it reads badly. It reads well to me. The translator, Paul Vincent, has a good reputation in the ITI. I wonder if the reviewer is getting carried away.