Re-reading this sentence from a September 26 entry:

And former Liverpool legend Ian Rush revealed a possibly flawed adaptation strategy at his new club Juventus when he bemoaned the fact that ‘living in Italy was like living in a foreign country’.

I thought to myself: Ian Rush could become a football (soccer) commentator. I was thinking of the Private Eye Colemanballs column, named after the BBC sports commentator David Coleman, who was famous for making slips. Colemanballs quotes don’t have to be by David Coleman, nor even by sports commentators. There were a number of little books of Colemanballs published.

Now, researching the subject on the Internet, I find a number of collections. A Wikipedia entry defines it, and reminds me of Yogi Berra, the U.S. equivalent. Wikipedia links to an entry on damaging quotations, which means Bushisms, Quayleisms and the like.

Here’s one Colemanballs collection. I’m not sure if there’s any copyright in these – really, Private Eye collected some of them. It begins:

“And here’s Moses Kiptanui – the 19 year old Kenyan, who turned 20 a few weeks ago” (David Coleman)
“Its a great advantage to be able to hurdle with both legs”
“And with an alphabetical irony, Nigeria follows New Zealand”
“There’s going to be a real ding-dong when the bell goes.”

And this one seems slightly out of place, but returns to the topic of British football players abroad:

“I was shocked when I was first introduced to the fans because they brought out a sheep, cut its head off and then smeared blood over my forehead” – Manchester United’s Ronnie Johnsen on life with Besiktas, Turkey

The Irish law blog, maccann.com, has an interesting entry on plain English for lawyers. It links to a report on the Law Society of Ireland’s new Plain English Guide to Legal Terms (link updated Dec 2015). The Guide acknowledges Kieron Wood and his glossary of legal terms simplified.

Maccann’s main point is that legal documents are hard to understand and plain English may give a false sense of understanding. He doesn’t deny that complex contracts can be written in plain English, if enough work is put into them, but he denies that the full meaning of the document can be understand by reading it through.

bq. If you think that legal writing ought to aspire towards honest-John tabloid-ese or towards so-called “literary” elegance, you’re a daydreamer with a fondness for soft targets.
And you know little about the limitations of language and less about the realities of business.

Reading this sends me off on a tangent. Books on plain English and on legal style can be helpful to translators: they often make it clear how far doublets and triplets can be rendered by one term, where legalese is jargon replaceable by something more straightforward, and where there are terms of art.

But translation brings other problems. Clients sometimes actually want the archaic language, not for the reasons Maccann mentions, i.e. for clarity or because it’s less deceptive for the client, but so the translation ‘sounds legal’. Sometimes I know that a German lawyer I am working for is going to think I don’t know my job if the translation is not peppered with law Latin. And of course, if I prepare a less jargon-ridded version, I too might be persuading the reader that he or she understands the text. After all, wondering about whether to use pursuant to or under merely scrapes the surface of meaning.

Clarity is an association with a journal to promote plain English. The somewhat outdated website does contain articles on the topic. There is also a links page and some articles.

Further to yesterday’s entry, Translate This! gives a link to a BBC page for the European Day of Languages that presents a snapshot of 35 European languages.

Today, September 26th, is the European Day of Languages. I discovered this by accident last week. It’s a spin-off of the European Year of Languages, which I do remember. The Council of Europe has information on it. Here’s the calendar showing more than 500 events from 40 countries:

bq. Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error ‘80040e31’
Timeout expired
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Shame about that. There was also a competition for a slogan for 2004 – winning three entries were Pack an extra language in your luggage; A world for living, languages for sharing; and Languages: a rainbow of colours and cultures. I find these mildly depressing

CILT has a page of what it calls ‘Celebrity linguists’, but not all of them actually say they speak a foreign language – some just think it’s a good idea.

The link to Linguist Online didn’t work either, but an abbreviated version took me to an article by Dan Brennan about how foreign footballers cope with language difficulties in their new country. (The Linguist is the journal of the Institute of Linguists):

bq. … for British players moving abroad, inability or reluctance to learn the language of their adopted country has often proved a major stumbling block. On being quizzed by the Italian media, Paul Gascoigne could, notoriously, only manage a belch by way of riposte. And former Liverpool legend Ian Rush revealed a possibly flawed adaptation strategy at his new club Juventus when he bemoaned the fact that ‘living in Italy was like living in a foreign country’. It will be interesting to see whether David Beckham will take a more enlightened approach at Real Madrid.

Perhaps I can pull myself together for St. Jerome’s day on September 30th (if I remember it).

Vertretbar.de (Sascha Kremer) reports that there has been a test of services offered by German local authorities online. I didn’t even realize you could register a change of address online. That would be very welcome. However, Fürth is described as ‘could do better’ (verbesserungswürdig), while Nurember gets top marks (vorbildlich).

Virtuelle Rathäuser online werden verglichen. Weitere Links bei Vertretbar.de.

The Juristisches Internetprojekt Saarbrücken (the best portal to start looking for German law, and it contains international links too) always has a link of the week. This week the link is porticolegal, described in German here (with past links of the week below).

Porticolegal offers news, statutes, case reports, literature, a search for lawyers, links to professional associations and universities, online journals and discussions forums, and much more.