I’m glad I’ve got BBC World on this new digital cable service, because at least their reporters know who the people are arriving at Camilla and Charles’ wedding. It frees me from those long tracking shots accompanied by silence or irrelevancies.

But I have just heard for the umpteenth time, ‘This is the quire of St. George’s Chapel – quire with a q, confusingly, where the choir sing’.

I know the spelling quire is not incorrect for part of the building, but it’s very rare, isn’t it? Where do these people get their educations?

I’ve just looked at Collins English Dictionary and it says ‘quire: archaic spelling’. At first I thought that maybe the royal family are being silly and insist on the spelling, but Google doesn’t bear me out.

By the way, I heard about the clash with the Pope’s funeral, but not about the Grand National.

While I’m busy elsewhere, here are some more parasitical offerings:

Babelport: There’s a new translation portal out, Babelport. I didn’t bother to look at it at first because these things are springing up like nobody’s business, but I’ve already seen a reference to its price calculator that sounded interesting and Céline of Naked Translations speaks well of it. She also locates another translator’s blog, linguatransl_blog, by Inka-Maria Kunz (be careful – it’s very pink).

Babelport was founded by Christian von Hansel – sorry, that should be Christian V. Hansel (clever middle initial there), who tries his hand at answering a legal translation question (EN>DE ‘void where prohibited by law’). It seems, alas, to have some kind of points system like ProZ.

OPML file for translation blogs: OPML file for translation blogs: Sonja of Translator’s Blog has created an OPML file containing the RSS feeds for several translators’ blogs.

Joi Ito on translation: Michael of Translate This! says Joi Ito’s blog is now available in Japanese too. He comments on Joi Ito’s remarks on payment for translations. In the comments, Joi Ito says the best things in life are free!

Blogos reports (from Danny Sullivan) that Google’s definition search is now multilingual.

To quote the Google Blog:

bq. What’s an “iwi”? What does “spiel” mean? Google Definitions is one example of how we work to make the world’s information more accessible: ask us what a word means, and we’ll try our best to get a good variety of definitions from all corners of the Web. So I’m happy to say that a handy feature just got handier; as of this week, Google Definitions is multilingual, and is indexing more sources than ever.

OK, so I entered in Google:

define: “common law”

(maybe the colon isn’t necessary). And what do I get – a German definition although my Google isn’t set to German. I hate this automatic definition of where I am. Anyway, I can then choose Englisch or Französisch or alle Sprachen.

You have to be cleverer than I am and read Google though:

bq. To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word “define,” then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined. If Google has seen a definition for the word or phrase on the Web, it will retrieve that information and display it at the top of your search results.

You can also get a list of definitions by including the special operator “define:” with no space between it and the term you want defined. For example, the search [define:World Wide Web] will show you a list of definitions for “World Wide Web” gathered from various online sources.

(An important thing to note is that the definitions search is automatic. Many references to a term that will not come up as definitions do actually contain definitions, however phrased, and many don’t.)

Try these two to see how it works:

define:Bratwurst
define Bratwurst

For results, read on: Continue reading →

Fünf deutsche Zahnärzte arbeiten ab jetzt in Blackburn. Exilzahnärzte sind aber nichts neues, berichtet Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen, wo man auch Details zu Einkommen und Kosten findet:

bq. Insgesamt sind auf der britischen Insel derzeit 31 000 Zahnärzte registriert. Zwei Drittel von ihnen arbeiten im NHS. Rund sieben Prozent der britischen Zahnärzte kommen aus der EU, weitere acht Prozent aus Nicht-EU-Ländern.

BBC News reports (thanks, Jana!) that five German dentists have been hired by a practice in Blackburn, Lancashire, to counter the serious lack of dentists.

bq. A team of German dentists has flown into the UK to treat patients at a practice in Lancashire.

Flying is the usual way nowadays, isn’t it?

Apparently English is not the first language of Germans:

bq. “English is a second language in Germany – but it might take a while for them to get used to the Lancashire accent.”

bq. One of the German dentists is Muslim, and dental nurses at the practice can speak Urdu, Gujarati and Arabic.

Do Muslims have to have Muslim dentists? Is this something to do with halal meat? I’m very ignorant about these things.

bq. Peter Lewenz, commissioning manager for Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust, said the dentists have all undergone checks – including a language test.

I’d be interested to know who administered the language test and what it was like.

Peter Müller has a not-very-long post on this term:

bq. Judex a quo: Gericht, welches die Entscheidung erlassen hat (Prozeßgericht)
Judex ad quem: Nächsthöheres Gericht

I have had to translate this into English before. I think it was in a Bundesverfassungsgericht decision and it was suggested I keep it. The terms are in Black’s Law Dictionary, but they are described as ‘Civil law’, i.e. not English or U.S., terms. I think it needs defining in English.

When I use Google, I want to decide for myself which of the hits I follow up. I don’t want Google – and Firefox – to automatically download the first hit to save me time. This is called ‘enhanced searching with Firefox‘.

How to disable this feature – see Karl-Friedrich Lenz in Lenz Blog.

((Die kurze Erklärung auf Deutsch habe ich nach Kritik des Publikums entfernt – anonymer ‘Frank’: “Wenn schon Übersetzung, dann richtig”. Es ging um einen Tippfehler “das” statt “dass” und ein Komme vor “um zu”. Ich übersetze ja nicht beruflich ins Deutsche, aber manchmal hatte ich den Eindruck, einige Leser sehen gerne eine deutsche Erklärung).