This is an SDL-Trados ad I saw in the ITI Bulletin, and it’s available online too. I am always impressed by the wonderful fingernail styling you see nowadays, and I wonder how easy it is to type with those nails (click to enlarge picture). However, the translator may use voice recognition software or, like Paul, typists (but I don’t think they’d show a male translator in an ad like this).

The text has a further heading: Demonstrate that you have what it takes to succeed in the Global Ecosystem.

SDL-Trados itself says the certification is very popular with clients:

bq. Corporate Language Departments and Language Service Providers are very positive, as they welcome a certification program that reduces the amount of time spent pre-qualifying translators on their expertise in translation technology and the practical application of the Create, Cleanse and Maintain (CCM) Methodology.

Create, Cleanse (I think that’s what they call Cleanen in German), Maintain. I use Star Transit and you don’t have to clean that. But my output is perhaps on the grubby side. And what about the Global Ecosystem: what if you drop out of it?

But something’s changed.

Not only was a recent remark of Prince Philip’s in bad taste, it was too difficult for dpa to understand:

bq. Bei einem Empfang in Edinburgh äußerte sich der 85jährige verwundert darüber, wie viele Waisenhäuser es in dem osteuropäischen Land gebe. “Man hat den Eindruck, daß sie dort nur brüten, um sie (die Kinder) in die Waisenhäuser zu bringen”, sagte Prinz Philip nach einem Bericht der Zeitung “The Sun”.

LATER NOTE: After calls for the original, here is something from the Scotsman:

bq. After a winner said he had worked in Romania, the Duke reportedly replied: “Romania? You didn’t go across to help in one of those orphanages, did you?”
When the student said no, it was claimed the 85-year-old duke added: “Ah good, there’s so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages.”
(Gleaned from the u-forum mailing list)

Comments will shortly be closed for a few days and blogging will be light to non-existent.

Ingmar Greil links a Welt article about the bowdlerization of Enid Blyton books, which at least in the German-speaking world is not commonly known of (I think I must have missed the news myself too). The occasion for the new reports is a biography of Blyton that has just been published.

bq. In England ist soeben ein Fall von Political Correctness im literarischen Bereich ruchbar geworden, der sich eigentlich schon vor wenigen Jahren zugetragen hat, aber erst jetzt an die breite Öffentlichkeit geraten ist. Es geht um einen Klassiker der Jugendbuchliteratur, Enid Blyton, deren Texte zum Opfer der Sanierfreudigkeit der Nachbesserer geworden sind.

Ingmar enquires whether copyright law cannot protect against this. It seems the copyright holders, Blyton’s heirs, sold the copyright (you can do that under English law but not German).

There’s a discussion in the Guardian Culture Vulture blog, which says that after all there is nothing to prevent someone publishing the originals too – but would the copyright holders not object?

I always disliked Blyton, but not on account of the racism. Something about the tone and the presumption that one would be interested in these boring characters, as far as I remember. The renaming of Dick and Fanny I suspect is for American sensibilities. The Guardian blog:

bq. Inhabited by anarchic golliwogs, thieving gypsies and slaphappy schoolmistresses, it’s hardly surprising that the desire to keep her stories in circulation has been tempered by an effort to adjust them for modern sensibilities. Even Blyton’s contemporaries thought the same (the publisher Macmillan once rejected a manuscript for its “unattractive … old-fashioned xenophobia”).

A golliwog:

The German colours have disappeared: