Spiegel Online has a curiously named section Fishwrap (Want to know what the German papers are saying?). It’s illustrated by a picture of two herring, I think, in a German tabloid-sized newspaper. I presume it’s named after the Guardian’s The Wrap, which is no longer free of charge. I thought this was a wrap-up of the news, but I may be missing something in understanding the reason for these names. Does it mean reading a summary of the news on the paper used to wrap up fish and chips (rather than raw herring)?

Here are a couple of quotes from the current Fishwrap:

bq. Will Iran be next? Will Bush wage war with every “Outpost of Tyranny”? What will happen to trans-Atlantic relations? Why does America celebrate its new president with a pompous event fit for a king or a dictator? Does this all really matter? These are the pressing questions for which German editorialists seek to divine answers on Friday.

I didn’t really start this blog in order to pull other translators’ work to pieces, so maybe I should let the text speak for itself. There are five things I’m not happy with there.

Another characteristic that is striking elsewhere in the article is the use of colloquial English that would be unusual in British or American writing. Even contractions are not common. Here is some more:

bq. Newspaper editors watched, too, and they’re having a field day with his inaugural speech in Friday’s editions. Surprisingly, only one paper predicts disaster, but if George W. Bush thought he would get the kid glove treatment over here, he can just forget it.

Referring to Die Tageszeitung:

bq. “Describing US President George W. Bush as a proselytizing crackpot leader of a superpower bristling with weapons doesn’t really move things forward, it doesn’t solve any problems and though offensive, it’s not especially original anymore,” it writes. “At the same time: Those who don’t want to take seriously this madness, which Bush did his best to show before and after his inauguration speech, are in for a terrible surprise from the US government.”

The translators are obviously briefed to use contractions frequently and to find colloquial expressions, which is particular hard for non-native speakers. It seems to me we have to look forward to a lot more of this international English. I wanted to say it’s an impoverishment of the language, but I don’t know if that’s the point. It reminds me of flying Lufthansa and reading their two-language magazine. The English there is hard to fault – it doesn’t have the errors seen above – but it follows the German very closely. I associate it with the enclosed air of a plane.

I note that Lufthansa Bordbuch in English is part of an online corpus of translations into English (and the German part is in a corpus too).

Robin Stocks at Carob reports on errors in the Polish version of the EU constitution, which has already been published in the Official Journal.

Der Standard:

bq. Warschau – Die EU-Verfassung ist sehr mangelhaft ins Polnische übersetzt worden. Die Ratifizierung könnte dadurch nicht nur um einige Monate verzögert werden, sondern könnte sogar gefährdet sein, berichtete am Mittwoch die polnische Tageszeitung “Rzeczpospolita”. Die Fehler betreffen auch wichtige Mechanismen: So ist bei der Wahl des Komitees für Sozialpolitik von einer qualifizierten Mehrheit der Mitgliedsländer die Rede, obwohl es durch eine einfache Mehrheit bestimmt wird. In der ersten Version würde Polen über nur eine Stimme verfügen, in der anderen hätte Polen dank eines komplizierten Rechnungssystems einen wesentlich größeren Einfluss bekommen.

Rainer Langenhan reports the following talk in German on copyright law for translators. Should be of particular interest to literary translators.

Am Donnerstag, 27.01.2005, 16.30 – 18.00 Uhr, hält Prof. Dr. Maximilian Herberger im Gebäude 4, Konferenzsaal 120, in der Universität des Saarlandes einen Gastvortrag zum Thema “Urhebervertragsrecht für Übersetzer”.

Christopher Moore has written a book, In Other Words, about untranslatables (via translation eXchange).

The NPR site lists some of these words/phrases from various languages. It also has an audio link for an interview.

They include ilunga, from the Tshiluba language, which has been done to death in the media.

For German, the word Korinthenkacker is given:

bq. korinthenkacker [core-in-ten-cuck-er] (noun)
A “raisin pooper” — that is, someone so taken up with life’s trivial detail that they spend all day crapping raisins. You can spot these types a mile off — it’s that irritating pen pusher or filing fanatic whose favorite job is tidying up the stationery cupboard.

I don’t think anyone’s ever told Christopher Moore the difference between raisins and currants.

It sounds like a bit of light reading, just listing such a miscellaneous collection. And is this word not chosen because it is amusing, especially to those who haven’t heard it before? It doesn’t seem untranslatable, although the best equivalents are even more colloquial (I suggest a fart in a colander). Collins has fusspot.

Strangely, Lions Club International has the web address www.korinthenkacker.de. And the book Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen I’ve already lusted after it, but I have too much else to read) gives the synonym Tüpflischeisser.

There have been some speculations as to Prince Harry’s paternity over the years, but there can be no doubt who his grandfather is.

Quotes from Prince Philip at Wikiquote (via quinparker.com).

Example:

bq. “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.”

* Notes: Said during the 1981 recession.

The Policeman’s Blog (via What’s New on the UK Legal Web?). On closed-circuit TV:

bq. The widespread use of CCTV in British town centres is not without its problems. The first of these is that it allows to police to arrive at situations very early on when people are highly agitated and anxious to make complaints of assault against people who happen to be standing next to them. This sets up a trail of bureaucracy which will ultimately result in the arrest, appearance in court and acquittal of both parties. A large part of my work consists of arresting people who make accusations about other people and subsequently end up getting arrested themselves. If I can generate crime numbers and get them to court I can improve my detection rate, I can also earn a bit of overtime by conducting the relevant enquiries, so it’s all win, win, win: Newtown police detection rate goes up, the participants get the satisfaction of seeing their drunken acquaintances in court and Mrs C. gets a new frock.

Walking the Streets, a traffic warden’s diary:

bq. Between one thing and another this isn’t such a bad way to make a living. The pay is better than being a Supermarket Shelf Stacker and once out of the office, you’re your own person. No time to be bored. Every day as they say, is a whole new ball game.