A new book – in German – Gerichtsdolmetschen, by Christiane Driesen and Haimo-Andreas Petersen – table of contents here.

(Via uepo.de)

Peter Newmark has died – more here. I believe he was originally a Germanist.

There has been a bizarre German blog contest called Frauen-Blog-WM 2011. This has been won by a translator’s blog, buurtaal by Alexandra Kleijn.

I suppose in view of the earnestness of German alsatian owners’ societies I should not be surprised. Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:

A new book, “Amazing Dogs,” by Dr. Jan Bondeson, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University School of Medicine in Wales, reveals that Hitler supported a German school that tried to teach large, muscular mastiffs to “talk” to humans. This story set off a panting spate of “Heel Hitler,” “Furred Reich,” “Wooffan SS” and “Arf Wiedersehen” headlines in British tabloids and plenty of claims that Hitler was “barking mad.”

“There were some very strange experiments going on in wartime Germany, with regard to dog-human communication,” Bondeson writes, wondering: “Were the Nazis trying to develop a breed of super-intelligent canine storm troopers, capable of communicating with their human masters of the Herrenvolk?”

He discovered a 1943 Nazi magazine piece about the headmistress of the canine school, a Frau Schmitt, claiming that some of the dogs spoke a few words. “At a Nazi study course, a talking dog was once asked ‘Who is Adolf Hitler?’ and replied ‘Mein Führer!” Bondeson writes of these claims, noting that “the Nazis, who had such conspicuous disregard for human rights, felt more strongly about the animals.”

Here is the book referred to.

Via Boing Boing

In Heidegger’s case, the question of how to read him may be of less immediate interest than the question ‘Why read Heidegger?’ Of those who have heard something about him, many dismiss him as an unrepentant ex-Nazi, pompous and mystical, more sophist than philosopher, anti-modernist and irrationalist, given to asking obscure questions like ‘What is being?’ or ‘What is the nothing?’, and to offering even more obscure answers like ‘Being is not’, or ‘the nothing noths’.

Mark Wrathall, How to Read Heidegger.

Wir kennen Kants Tagesablauf bis ins letzte Detail und wollen ihn skizzieren:

4.55 Uhr: Wecken durch den Diener Lampe mit den Worten:”Es ist Zeit!”
5.00 Uhr: Aufstehen. Frühstück: keines, nur zwei Tassen schwacher Tee und eine Pfeife Tabak zur Anregung des Darmes. Erstes Arbeiten in Schlafrock, Pantoffeln und Nachtmütze, wahrscheinlich für die folgende Vorlesungstätigkeit.
7 – 9 Uhr: Vorlesungstätigkeit, inzwischen in vollständiger Garderobe.
9 – 12.45 Uhr: Hauptarbeitszeit für die Abfassung seiner Bücher, wieder im Hausmantel.
12.45 Uhr: Umkleiden, Empfang der Tischgäste im Arbeitszimmer, wieder in vollständiger Garderobe.
13 – 16 Uhr: Ausgedehntes Mittagessen im Speisezimmer mit geladenen Freunden, die einzige Mahlzeit am Tag. Lieblingsspeise: Kabeljau, stets eine Flasche Rotwein “Medoc”, manchmal auch Weißwein. Die Tafel wird eröffnet mit dem stereotypen “Nun, meine Herren!”
16 Uhr: Kant geht spazieren, immer allein. Er nimmt, von einer Änderung abgesehen, immer den gleichen Weg. Die Königsberger Bürger, so wird gerne erzählt, stellen die Uhr nach ihm.
Abends: Lesetätigkeit, “leichte” Lektüre, bevorzugt Reisebeschreibungen.
22 Uhr: Strengste Bettruhe.

Ralf Ludwig, Kant für Anfänger. Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Eine Lese-Einführung

But will I get further than the first pages?

In other philosophy news, Peter Adamson, Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at King’s College London, is doig the history of philosophy without any gaps in podcasts. He has reached podcast 41 and Aristotle.

This is the last post in this accursed meme. I think the book I’ve most often given is Dr. Seuss You’re only old once, although it may not always have been appreciated much.

I’m afraid I shall miss it this year. I missed it in previous years too, but the ducks were less interesting then. I hope it isn’t too hard on the real ducks.

I read the headers of a large number of blogs in a feed reader, so I couldn’t help noticing that a number of translators’ blogs had taken up the idea of posting their favourite language blogs. The ball was started rolling by A ♥ for Language Blogs by Judy and Dagmar Jenner, who were thinking of #followfriday on Twitter (something I am not a fan of because there’s not enough space to say why you should follow these people). It’s been taken up by several others, including Michael Wahlster at Translate This!. Michael even found a plagiarism of his own entry where everything had been renamed.

I liked Michael’s idea of only mentioning the blogs he likes that no one else has mentioned. That’s what I’m going to do too. One he mentioned was completely new to me: BIK Terminology, by Barbara Inge Karsch. I’ve put that on my list.

On top of this, I don’t read a lot of translation blogs in detail. There are lots out there directed at people who want to make their business grow, whereas I sometimes want my business to go away.

My favourites include

love german books by Katy Derbyshire. I recently gave her a plug on the ITI GerNet journal Netzblatt. Katy appears to tell it like it is about the world of translation and publishing in Berlin. Mind you, I can’t remember her ever running down an actual book. I read her because I like to read German books too.

I’m also a reader of the possibly obscure Desbladet. Des has succeeded in escaping the UK and is now living in the Netherlands with his wife and his two children whose real names are probably not Boris and Egberdina.

Not so much a language blog is German Joys by Andrew Hammel, who teaches U:S. law at Düsseldorf University. I find myself clicking through to read his full posts and comments almost more than with any other blog.

Michael mentions Sprachblog, by Ines Balcik, but for some reason I found myself dissatisfied with her entries and no longer follow. I prefer Sprachblog by Anatol Stefanowitsch.

I read Trevor too, although it is often too difficult for my brain to get round. anythingarian rambles & rants from the land of the fretting nun

LATER NOTE: and Sentence first by Stan Carey hasn’t been mentioned by anyone yet.

EVEN LATER NOTE: and I also forgot MA Translation Studies News, An informal blog for translation students and graduates of the University of Portsmouth at home and abroad, which is more interesting to non-Portsmouthers than that sounds.