You can see the big A for Apotheke in this photo of the Rathaus (reflected in the big Apotheke window).

Buurtaal wrote about this phenomenon a few weeks ago (in German – here’s an English article about the subject).

If you buy something, most of these chemists (pharmacists) give you a small present. A pack of paper handkerchiefs is good. The worst is if you get something really expensive, like tablets for 600 euros, and they feel obliged to give you something ‘valuable’ that may be not to your taste. There’s one down the street here that gives tokens (Taler) which you can use to buy half a roll at a local bakery and so on. I just hand the tokens back – my life is complicated enough already.

This week, the Hirsch Apotheke gave me a small soap in the form of the A for Apotheke. I am very pleased with this because it is so bizarre.

This is difficult. I tend to forget covers and look at the inside of a book. Sometimes I hesitate to buy a book with a cover showing the actors in the latest TV or film adaptation, especially if I read the book before it was adapted.

Most covers seem to date. Possibly a foodie book, like Jennifer McLagan’s Fat – you can see a picture of the cover in the right margin here.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, which I read last year. In fact, I was on the ferry from Dunkirk and they had no English Sunday papers, and I had nothing with me, and this was the only book they had I could face reading. It was a great read. I know the author is working on a sequel, but in the mean time she was ill – she wrote a hospital diary for the LRB.

Am I really only halfway through this meme? Must press on.

Here is my second colleague’s book. The photo is not too good.

Details on the publisher’s website (in German).

This is a synoptic translation: the original German on the left, sometimes descriptive, sometimes parts of legislation, and the English version, by Fry & Bonthrone Partnership, on the right.

I must say I haven’t used this much. I used to use its predecessor quite a lot, but that was in the days when I actually translated German accounting texts. Since then I think the translation of accounts between German and English has become more specialized, and the subject has become more complex with the introduction of the IFRS – this book has a nice table comparising IFRSs, US GAAP and German Accepted Accounting Principles, but there’s lots more reading out there.

Anyway, this is the Bible on accounting translation from German to English. And I actually used it in December when I had a short urgent job containing a small balance sheet from Switzerland, but only to remind me of what I ought to know.

If you want to buy this, at 48 euros, note that it dates from 2005 and there may well be another edition in the pipeline – but of course, nobody knows how long a pipeline is, especially with publishers (my personal bugbear is the new edition of Volker Triebel et al. Englisches Handels- und Wirtschaftsrecht, which if we are very lucky, and rich, we may get before Christmas, but it has been promised for years – the publisher says ‘third quarter 2011’). In fact I heard that there may be a new synoptic work coming out covering German GAAP, the Bilanzrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz and IFRSs.

One thing I regret about this book is that it lacks an index. In fact, every time I open it I look for an index, but there never is one. At the same time, it’s extremely complex and long and indexing would be a nightmare.

Fey / Fladt: Deutsches Bilanzrecht / German Accounting Legislation

Die 4., vollständig überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage des “Brooks/Mertin” enthält drei Teile, die jeweils in deutsch und englisch verfasst sind.

Unfortunately I won’t be in London next Wednesday, but I have stolen this announcement from a mailing list:

Imperial College London

Date: Wednesday, 26th January 2011
Time: 5-6 pm
Room: Huxley Building, Room 144

Dr Sieglinde Pommer, Oxford University, UK
Translation as Transcultural Dialogue: The Case of Law

Talk outline: The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies has brought about an understanding of translating as a complex cultural activity which raises difficult questions about how to handle culture-specific assumptions. Translators are confronted with the asymmetry of thought systems, the relativity of concepts, and have to deal with inconsistent categorizations and classifications. Their task as cultural mediators is to adequately communicate information about a foreign culture specifically taking into account the divergent previous knowledge and divergent expectations of the target audience in order to avoid misunderstandings.
Exploring the particularities of legal contexts, this presentation discusses the specific challenges of translating law to achieve transparency in global legal discourse.

Biography: Sieglinde E. Pommer is currently APART-Scholar at Oxford Law Faculty. A member of the New York Bar, Sieglinde holds doctoral degrees in law and translation studies from Vienna, an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School, and the Diplôme Supérieur de Droit Comparé from Strasbourg. After internships at the ECJ and the WHO, she was a post-doc fellow at Oxford, Geneva, McGill, and Harvard, and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of California. Sieglinde served as EST Secretary-General from 2007 to 2010. Her dissertation on the complex relationship of comparative law and legal translation was awarded the Figdor Prize 2006 by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

For a complete list of seminars for the academic year 2010-2011, visit: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/humanities/translationgroup/guestspeakers

Sieglinde Pommer published a revised version of her Dr. Phil. thesis with Peter Lang Verlag as Rechtsübersetzung und Rechtsvergleichung

The publisher says:

Im Unterschied zur Interdependenz von Sprache und Recht wurde der komplexen Beziehung von Rechtsübersetzung und Rechtsvergleichung in Theorie und Praxis bisher nur wenig Beachtung geschenkt. In der Studie wird das vielschichtige Verhältnis zwischen Rechtsübersetzung und Rechtsvergleichung genauer erforscht und systematisch aufgearbeitet. Für beide Disziplinen bilden sowohl ein Sprach- wie auch ein
Rechtsvergleich die Grundlage, wird doch im Rahmen der Rechtsvergleichung Recht übersetzt, und auch das Übersetzen von Recht beruht auf rechtsvergleichenden Überlegungen. Nach einer Analyse der Besonderheiten der Rechtssprache werden zunächst die theoretischen Grundlagen untersucht und in der Folge interdisziplinäre Fragestellungen erörtert. Schließlich werden Schlußfolgerungen über die Natur der Interdisziplinarität von Rechtsübersetzung und Rechtsvergleichung gezogen, und es wird gezeigt, daß die Heranziehung und Weiterentwicklung rechtsvergleichender Theorien der Spezifizität der Rechtssprache bei der Methodik der Rechtsübersetzung am besten Rechnung tragen und ein interdisziplinärer Zugang verbesserte Übersetzungsstrategien hervorbringt.

I have had this book for a couple of years but not found time to read it. It is only about 170 pages long and large parts describe the subject, but it’s rather academic (naturally).

Well, maybe just one more picture from this morning.