Author Archives: MMarks

KCL German play

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King’s College German Play, Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit), had its first night on 7 March and there is another performance on 11 March. I saw it with another former King’s student. Everything has changed since the late sixties. The students are a mix of nationalities and subjects – European Studies, European Politics, War Studies, Comparative literature. It was an excellent production with great pace. It really was over in 2 hours so they must have cut quite a bit; the play is rather wordy. Some of the students speak very fluent German.

There are English surtitles – actually a block of text from a translated version of the play. Obviously it had to be cut to the right length, but was it a published version or done by the students themselves? I saw this with Nathan der Weise in Berlin, where they had a rather aged English translation.

The play was on in a place called Tutu’s on the 4th floor of the Macadam Building in Surrey Street. It was dreadfully cold there! The performance used projected images and sound effects – for instance the trains passing through at the beginning – and few props (I missed the coffin, but it wouldn’t have worked here). Desmond Tutu is an alumnus and a rather weird sculpture of his head is above the door:

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We went in memory of the plays we remembered from our own time as students, shockingly 50 years ago. I remember Biedermann und die Brandstifter in 1966 and Minna von Barnhelm in 1967. The current offering is an old chestnut too. But it’s still being performed in the real world and you can see video clips from Bochum, Zurich, and Berlin online (probably there are more out there too).

The KCL version is on a bare stage – here are some photos I stole from the KCL German Society Twitter feed:

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A mere conduit?

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Under the E-Commerce Regulations, an ISP can escape liability for content because it is a mere conduit.

Conduit in the figurative sense: the OED says

4. fig. The channel or medium by which anything (e.g. knowledge, influence, wealth, etc.) is conveyed;

But currently in the USA, there is an argument as to whether an interpreter or translator is a mere conduit.

I suppose that’s how some customers see us.

When the police use an interpreter in an interrogation and do not record the defendant’s words but only the translation of them into English, can the interpreter be challenged legally? Lawrence Solan writes in his Balkinization blog:

An interesting question concerning forensic linguistics is making its way through the appellate courts: When the police use an interpreter during an interview (or interrogation) of a suspect who later becomes a defendant in a prosecution, and the defendant’s words in her original language are not recorded, does the defendant have a constitutional right to confront the interpreter? As a cost-saving measure, more and more law enforcement agencies, and some courts, have been retaining services that interpret the interview over the telephone. One of them, Language Line Solutions. http://www.languageline.com/, has found itself in the middle of this constitutional question.
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courts should be more realistic in their understanding of what interpreters and translators can do. First, courts should stop relying on the “conduit” theory of translation. Compare two reputable translations of any work of literature. They will be similar in some ways, different in others. To the extent that word choice matters in the context of a criminal prosecution, nuanced differences may affect a case’s outcome. Second, interpreters make errors. The legal system should recognize this. Third, courts should not accept as accurate representations that the entire professional staff of a private firm retained by the government is dispassionate and of high professional character. Surely the defendant need not accept such representations.

Solan recommends that at least the original statements should be recorded as potential evidence.

They studied German (1) Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown

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While UK university German departments are closing down and German is less and less popular as a school subject, let’s look at some people who studied German, or perhaps just learnt it, in the past.

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Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown studied modern languages with an emphasis on German at Edinburgh University. It was Ernst Udet who suggested to Brown that he should learn German.

In 1936 Brown’s father took him to the Olympics in Berlin, where they met Hermann Göring and Ernst Udet, both First World War fighter aces. Udet took young Brown flying in a two-seat Bucker Jungmann from Halle airfield and, after throwing the aircraft around the skies, declared that Brown had the temperament of a fighter pilot and must learn to fly.

He interrogated Göring at the Nuremberg Trials too. He said when Göring held out a hand to him to shake on parting, he was unable to take it, but instead it occurred to him to say ‘Hals- und Beinbruch’, which he described as the traditional pilots’ greeting, although that seems a narrow view.

There’s a bit about his studies in a video on an Edinburgh University site. He studied German with subsidiary French from 1937 (finishing after the war in 1947), and the Foreign Office said he should spend six months in Germany and six in France after his second year, so he went as an English assistant to Salem School in summer 1939. Of his 18 pupils, 17 died in the war and the survivor had only one leg.

Happy New Year

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This made a very small splash in the centre of Upminster. No Chinese appear to have been present. Jiu Jitsu may have been involved.

dr3w

The event was combined with Christmas costumes:

dr42

It was definitely easier to get shots than in Gerrard Street last year.

The Journal of Specialised Translation

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There is a new issue of The Journal of Specialised Translation out (link to full table of contents).

Individual items can be accessed in HTML or as PDFs.

I was interested in Marian Flanagan: Cause for concern? Attitudes towards translation crowdsourcing in professional translators’ blogs. Here is the abstract:

This paper seeks to identify professional translators’ attitudes towards the practice of translation crowdsourcing. The data consist of 48 professional translator blogs. A thematic analysis of their blog posts highlights three main findings: translation crowdsourcing can enhance visibility of the translation profession, but fails to enhance visibility of the professional translator; ethical concerns are raised regarding translator participation in non-profit translation crowdsourcing, and the shifting of responsibility from the professional to the non-professional translator; professional translators do not openly discuss their motives for differentiating between the various non-profit initiatives, and while there is much discussion on translation crowdsourcing for humanitarian causes, little or no attention is paid to free and open source software projects.

The list of blogs at the end indicates that many did not discuss crowdsourcing at all, whereas others had several entries on it – not surprising in view of the variety of approaches in translators’ blogs.

There is some discussion (I’ve only skimmed the article) of the ethics of translation crowdsourcing, whether the translation is for a for-profit organization like LinkedIn or for a non-profit organization, where there appears to be a confict between its involvement in projects that could benefit others financially, while hiring professional translators who work for free. What do translators think about this? And are non-professionals taking responsibility for the translations, taking it out of the hands of translators?

I’ve only skimmed the article though. I am wondering about the status of Translators without Borders – I think Médecins sans frontières actually pays its doctors, whereas I assume TwB doesn’t pay translators, but it is getting a lot of free advertising – who supervises its finances, which must be considerable? This is not dealt with specifically in the article.

There is also a review by Łucja Biel of the University of Warsaw of a book on legal lexicography:
Mac Aodha, Máirtín (ed.) (2014). Legal Lexicography. A Comparative Perspective. Law, Language and Communication (series editors Anne Wagner and Vijay Kumar Bhatia). Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 339, £75.00. ISBN: 978-1-4094-5441-0.

I may report on this myself depending on time and energy. Łucja Biel’s own book:
Lost in the Eurofog: The Textual Fit of Translated Law (2014) is also reviewed and sounds interesting.