Abigail Dahlberg’s Dispatches from an Environmental Translator’s Desk is a new weblog to me, and not very old either. She is a UK German-English translator living in Kansas City.
I noted in particular a link to a story in the Washington Post about the demise of the copy editor. As Abigail says, read carefully.
The BDÜ, the German translators’ and interpreters’ association (there are others) wants its members to answer a questionnaire from the German Ministry of Justice about their prices. This is in connection with an amendment of the JVEG, the Gesetz über die Vergütung von Sachverständigenn, Dolmetscherinnen, Dolmetschern, Übersetzerinnen und Übersetzern sowie die Entschädigung von ehrenamtlichen Richterinnen, ehrenamtlichen Richtern, Zeuginnen, Zeugen und Dritten (I think that’s what they call the long name). The laudable idea is that the Ministry should not believe we all work for peanuts, or get its information from big agencies and the Yellow Pages.
The BDÜ certainly keeps tags on its members who have not yet got round to consenting to this. Not much privacy there.
After I agreed for my name and details to be passed on:
Ihre Entscheidung wurde registriert und wird bei der Weitergabe der Daten an das Bundesjustizministerium berücksichtigt.
Sie haben bis zur Ende der Abstimmungszeit jederzeit die Möglichkeit, Ihre Entscheidung zu korrigieren.Klicken Sie hier, um zur Startseite von MeinBDÜ zu wechseln
Wir haben Ihnen eine Bestätigungsmail an Ihre E-Mail-Adresse geschickt.
Übrigens: Sie haben MeinBDÜ zuletzt am 18.07.2008, 13:57, besucht. Seit dieser Zeit sind dort zahlreiche interessante und nutzbringende Beiträge verfasst worden.
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This is ridiculous! Why do they allow me to follow their RSS feed? I only went online on July 28 in order to answer a message.
I suppose most professional associations are a bit backward when it comes to the Internet, but I could do without this irritation.
The von Beseler – Jacobs-Wüstefeld law dictionary can still be bought, at a price.
EN>DE 1986, DE>EN 1991
I have the latter and find it useful, although most of the time I leave it aside and turn to Dietl and Romain. Not that von Beseler is not as good, but one or two dictionaries are enough in number/desk space. However, von Beseler gives a very large selection of terms to consider. Its layout has always been superb (I have the previous edition too).
Amazon offers ‘Search inside’, but none of the alphabetical pages are there!
However, the dictionary can be found in Google Books, and although not every page is open to consult, you might certainly have some luck with terms. (Mind you, it would be quicker to find terminology elsewhere).
Soko Leipzig and The Bill collaborating – to be shown in the UK in November 2008, in Germany who knows when.
One fears the worst.
This seems to be more popular than Amnesty International or the Malteser, but I didn’t investigate exactly what they want to fight for on my behalf.
Rudolf Hermstein: Chandler verschandelt, oder
Das luftgetriebene Riesenhorn
In 1976, when Hellmuth Karasek’s translation of Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake appeared, I wasn’t living in Germany.
That may explain why I am so late to hear about other translators’ reactions to it, albeit not too late to hear Karasek holding forth about literature – and translation – on the box.
At least at that time, Karasek not only had a slim grasp of the English language, but he didn’t take much trouble to find out what the unfamiliar terms meant, even where his interpretation did not make much sense to him. His German style was a little rocky too.
The article linked above gives a full account in German. Some gems: interpreting you darn fool as if it had to do with darning; in ‘You can’t tell anything about an outfit like that’, with reference to a company, taking outfit to mean the furnishing of the room; an air-raid horn on a police car (the USA had just entered WWII when the novel appeared) is taken to be a large air-powered siren; ‘(the secretary) looked a little warmer, but no prairie fire’ comes across in German as ‘not like a prairie on fire’, which doesn’t work.
Thanks to Christiane