Raul Yzaguirre, President of the National Council of La Raza, testified to a U.S. Senate committee on language problems for minority-language speakers in the 2000 presidential election. Inter alia, he quotes a report on problems of Chinese speakers in New York City:

bq. Inaccurate translations. The Chinese translation for “Democrat” and “Republican” were reversed. Paper ballots requested by absentee voters also contained mistakes in the Chinese-language instructions.

bq. Lack of Chinese interpreters. At polling sites across the city, particularly those places with dense Asian populations, there were insufficient numbers of interpreters to serve Chinese-speaking voters.

bq. Chinese characters on the ballot too small to read. Obviously, the fundamental purpose of language translations is undermined when the characters are unreadable on the machine ballot.

(from Trevor, in followthebaldie, in Catalan)

The Onion reports that a new worm disabled the Internet on Monday and Tuesday and people were forced to work.

bq. “This is terrible,” said Miami resident Ron Lewison, an employee at Gladstone Finance and an Amazon.com Top 500 Reviewer. “For two days, I’ve been denied access to the vital information I need to go about my workday. In the absence of that information, I’ve been forced to go about my job.”

To quote Tom Mighell at Inter Alia, ‘The scary thing is, we all know it’s true’.

LATER NOTE: This edition is the 2002 edition with a new cover. Moreover, the quotes from the TES and TLS given on the original cover are now both ascribed to the TES. Conclusion: a waste of money!

There is a 2003 edition of Elizabeth Martin’s Oxford Dictionary of Law. This is a relatively small paperback, price £9.99. In its first edition it was called Concise Oxford Dictionary of Law, but later they dropped the ‘concise’. As there’s no British equivalent to Black’s (USA, especially Garner’s 7th ed.) or Creifelds (Germany), I prefer this. There are other dictionaries of the same size, such as Mozley and Whitely or Curzon, which tend to have more and briefer entries. I should make a special reference to Chambers, because that has a surprisingly large number of entries on Scottish law.

Uexküll, Wörterbuch der Patent- und Markenpraxis DE>ENGrant and Cutler are said to be selling it for £92.85).

This isn’t Father Christmas, but a man inspecting a fake chimney concealing a mobile phone mast (see the large rectangular vertical pipe on the right next to the drainpipe). When I first saw these chimneys, I assumed they were meant to stop people complaining about the effects on their children’s brains.

However, I read recently that in areas with listed buildings, permission will be given only if the masts are disguised. I’m not sure whether to believe this. Here’s an article in German with more pictures, including this very building (scroll down to Suchbild), and here is a BBC news report in English.

bq. Dotted around Britain are fake chimney pots, fake flagpoles, fake drainpipes and fake signs all made of glass-reinforced plastic and concealing mobile antennas.

However, Fürth does have over 2000 listed buildings (some marked in red on the plan below).

(Click on all pictures to enlarge).

In July I mentioned Peter Griffin’s bilingual version of a novel – Tocats pel foc – Touched by Fire – by Manuel de Pedrolo.

Peter was obliged to buy it back from the publisher to stop it getting pulped. I can now post the following:

TRANSLATOR RANSOMS 490 COPIES FROM PUBLISHER,
GETS P.O. BOX AND SELLER’S PERMIT, SLASHES PRICE!

More details here.

The price is now $15 (within the USA, I suppose), plus sales tax in California.

ADDED LATER: The price of $15 including postage applies outside the USA too.