I don’t always understand what’s going on outside my office:
even when it’s over:
Plaque / Tafel
Reply
Author Archives: MMarks
US bowdlerization of children’s book/Rotraut Susanne Berner und die USA
Something in this picture was too much for Boyds Mills Press in the USA. They wanted to publish a translation of Rotraut Susanne Berner’s children’s book, but without this picture and another picture of a nude, both exhibits in an art gallery. The author insisted on the censorship being made obvious, for example by the pictures being blacked out, so it seems the book is unlikely to appear. Die Welt writes:
Erst im Februar hatten US-Bibliotheken ein preisgekröntes Kinderbuch aus ihren Regalen verbannt, weil auf der ersten Seite das Wort scrotum (Hodensack) vorkam. Zuvor geriet selbst Harry Potter wegen angeblicher Bezüge zum Satanismus unter Beschuss der selbst ernannten Sittenwächter.
Author’s nude drawings too hot for US publisher, from the Independent.
Kein deutscher Mini-Penis für die USA, from Die Welt (with 4 illustrations).
LATER NOTE: for visitors from the Absolute Write Water Cooler, here’s the other offending picture:
This subject is generating as much traffic as my old entry on how IKEA names its furniture.
Swiss criminal law terminology / Terminologie des Schweizer Strafrechts
This vocabulary doesn’t seem familiar to me. Go to the Obergericht, click on Dolmetscherwesen and then on Strafrechtsterminologie der Bundeskanzlei (D, F, I, E). It can’t be copied, but here’s one entry, scanned, to give an impression (scanned, OCR’d but not spellchecked for the various languages):
20
Täter (1); Täterin (2); Straftäter (3); Straftäterin (4); Delinquent (5); Delinquentin (6); Straffälliger (7); Straffällige (8)Person, die rechtswidrig und schuldhaft einen gesetzlichen Tatbestand erfüllt hat.
PS: CH; USG: (7)(8) zu vermeiden
(1) Schweiz. Strafgesetzbuch, Art. 7 (SR 311.0): (2) BSG 321.1 G 150395, Art. 46 Abs. 1 Ziff. 1; (3) BFS/BJ,
Anstaltenkatalog, 1998, S. 11: (4) POMBE, Baechtold, 1995; (5) BFS, Rückfallraten, 1997, S. 21; (6)(DF)(USG)
T. Freytag, Universität Freiburg, Seminar für Strafrecht, 2001; (7)(8) BFS, Bewährungshiffe in der Schweiz, 2001,
S.4
auteur (1); auteure (2); auteur de l’lnfraction (3); auteure de l’lnfraction (4); auteur de l’acte (5); auteure de l’acte (6); auteur de l’acte punissabie (7); auteure de l’acte punissabie (8); deltnquant (9); delinquante (10); auteur dlrect (11); auteure directe (12); auteur materiel (13); auteure materielle (14); auteur immediat (15); auteure immediate (16)Personne qui accomplit personneilement, avec la consclence ou ia volonte extgees par la loi, les actes
materlels constitutlfs d’une infraction.
PS:CH
Code penal suisse, (1) art. 7, (3) art. 27 a\. 3, (5) art. 18 ai 3, (9) art. 42 eh. 1 (RS 311.0); (2)(6)(8) CHA BE,
SCTerm, 1997; (4)(12)(14)(16)(GRM) ACH; (7) RSB 321.1 L 150395, art. 235; (10) Cornu, Voc. juridique, 1990,
p. 248; (11)(13)(15) Graven, Infraction penaie punissabie, 1995, p. 282; (DF) d’apres source (10), p. 83 sous
“auteur”
autore (1); autrice (2); autore di un reato (3); autrice di un reato (4); autore di reato (5); autrice di reato (6); autore diretto (7); autrice diretta (8); agente (9); delinquente (10)
Persona che realizza I presupposti oggettivl e soggettivi 6\ un reato. PS: CH: GRM: (9M10)f./m.
(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(DF) aw. M. Hohl Tattarietti, 2001; Codice penaie svizzero, (9) art. 7 cpv. 3, (10) art. 42 n. 1 (RS 311.0)
offender (1); perpetrator (2)Person who commits a crimlnal act with the mens rea required by the law.
PS:CH
(1) Home Office, Digest 2, Criminal Justice System, 1993, p. 7; (2) Romain, Dict. Legat Terms, part 1, EN-DE, 1989;
(DF) adaptation ofFrench definition
On the subject of Swiss German, Jens Wiese at Blogwiese has just announced that he has reached the end of his topic. At the moment he is rehashing old topics. He says that he often gets queries and they are all words he has already discussed. He still writes a weekly column in a couple of Swiss newspapers.
(Thanks to the ubiquitous Urs Wolffers)
Lexicography booklist / Bibliographie der Lexikografie
Euralex, the European Association for Lexicography, has interesting resources and links, and most recently the International Bibliography of Lexicography, which is being developed in the form of a wiki.
Shoelaces / Schnürsenkel
Note the video clip of the Ian Knot on the FAQ page. I had to think a long time before I could distinguish it from the Standard Shoelace Knot. In fact the end result is the same, except that the Ian Knot starts with a first knot, which must slow things down.
(Via Lifehacker)
Perlentaucher / FAZ
In der Frankfurter Rundschau fasst Thierry Chevel (einer der Perlentaucher-Erfinder) die Perlentaucher-Feindlichkeit der FAZ zusammen: Fünf Artikel, zwei Prozesse (über Handakte WebLAWg)
Siehe auch Die FAZ hasst den Perlentaucher, in Das Literatur-Café vom 29. Juni 2007.
Perlentaucher.de is a website that summarizes and links to print and other media on literature, above all the arts pages of the big German-language newspapers. It has an RSS feed too.
And it has an English version, signandsight, which has led to more articles on German literature in the foreign press than there used to be (it translates Feuilleton as feuilleton, but still).
Apparently the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung thinks Perlentaucher is making money from other people’s work. A recent court decision finding that Perlentaucher had misquoted the FAZ was reported there in vitriolic terms.
There is an ongoing court case where the plaintiffs are the FAZ and SZ (Süddeutsche Zeitung) and the defendant Perlentaucher, on the subject of whether summarizing reviews is plagiarism. The papers lost at first instance. The appeal is scheduled for 24 July.