Sharon Neeman, whom I’ve heard of but don’t know, has a wonderful song about legal translation on YouTube. It’s copyright 2006, but new to me (thanks to Per).

The clock was close to quitting time, my desk was almost clear
I thought perhaps I’d slip around the corner for a beer
But the phone rang and I answered and a friendly voice said ‘Hi’.
It was the secretary of a legal firm nearby.

She said, ‘Oh please excuse me caling this late in the day,
But we have a new petition in a case that’s underway.
Can you translate it tomorrow – any time by five will do –
Cause we wouldn’t want to give the work to anyone but you.’

It’s only five thousand words…

Incidentally, a normal daily translation figure is widely thought to be 2000 words, at least from English to German.

And scarcely a foreign element – but a pack of Herta export frankfurters.

Found at supersized.meals.com

Arrrr me harteys. Thar be a meatship ahead in the oven…. Floating high on the 17,000 calorie seas, made with Bacon, sausages, pastry, mince, it’s all meat, and it’s coming to rape and pillage your arteries! Har har!

One commenter says, ‘It will never fly’.

Photos by Joel Richards (in Bristol).

Hat tip to Trevor, who says ‘The Germans go on about their bloody sausages, but they lack the
maritime tradition to make something like this’.

Handakte WebLAWg reports on a new online legal translation company, Tolingo.

They describe their translators as qualifiziert und zertifiziert. They also have geprüfte Lektoren.

I couldn’t help noticing this:

Die Drei Punke
Ihre Texte werden dreifach geprüft: linguistisch, stilistisch und fachlich.

I see they use translation memory, unlike many legal translators. They need to be very careful about the quality of their memory, of course, and also consider the copyright aspects.

Das elektronische Gehirn
Unser Translation Memory System garantiert die `richtige´ Terminologie in jeder Fachrichtung.

Tolingo also has a blog, with a photo of the ‘Team’ of ‘tolinguisten’. They say they pay translators for DE/EN (both directions?) from seven to eleven eurocents per word.

Train without driver:

Goethe weilte in Nürnberg! was it in Goethestraße at Maxfeld?

Rathenauplatz:

Q. How do you say Queen Mother in German?
A. Queen Mum.

It’s never filtered through that this expression is only used by a few newspapers for effect.

Bianca Jagger lost a valuable ring in Austria. Austrian law requires that the finder be paid 5% of the value of the ring (German law has a similar provision). The finder has taken her to court in Salzburg for slander – she said that he handed in the ring far too late (8 days after it was announced in the press, before which time he thought the ring was worthless). After this civil case, it will be clear whether the finder’s reward is to be paid. It would be 10,000 euros.

Jagger, a human rights activist, made an alternative offer in November to pay 9,000 euros to Amnesty International and the remaining 1,000 euros to Ringler’s daughter, according to her Austrian lawyer Gabriel Lansky.

But negotiations between the parties failed.

The civil suit will go to court on May 4. If Jagger loses, she will have to pay 19,000 euros, including court and lawyers’ fees.

In the US, finder’s fee usually refers to a commission agreed to be paid for introducing businesses and customers.

Süddeutsche Zeitung report

AFP report

BBC article on Oetzi (the iceman)

(Via Handakte WebLAWg)