I finally got around to buying Mox – Illustrated Guide to Freelance Translation. I always like seeing the cartoons on the blog, but I seem to have missed the book actually being published.

Alejandro Moreno-Ramos is a translator from English and French to European Spanish, trained in electromechanical engineering, who has been publishing cartoons on the web for some time about Mox, his alter ego:

Mox is a young but well educated translator. Two PhDs, six languages… and he hardly earns the minimum wage

Other characters include Mox’s girlfirend, Lena, his pet tortoise, the senior translator Calvo, the evil project manager Pam and Crados, the evil CAT software.

Some of the cartoons are based on ideas sent in by other translators, and the book contains a number of articles by some of the most famous translators on the interwebs.

My favourite cartoons were those where St. Jerome shows Mox the various circles of translators’ hell (only six here) and the local translators’ association (‘We meet once a week over some beers. Our main real activity is to complain among ourselves about low rates’).

In the Guardian. Germany’s ambassador to the UK, Georg Boomgaarden – your questions answered.

Question by jfriedrich, 21 September 2012 3:28PM

Good day to you sir. I’m German and my question deals with a very much neglected issue, regarding the culinary well-being of British expats in Germany. Why is it next to virtually impossible to get British sausages even over delicatessen counters in Germany? Would Germany not gain tremendously in the eyes of our British friends if we could become a bit more accomodating? Also, haven’t you developed a craving for these tubes yourself and can you imagine what it’s like being hooked on them and finding the only substitute in (admittedly exellent) Nürnberger Rossbratwürste? The British banger is the quintessential ingredient for a proper fry-up and even if this helps the British tourism board, I cannot possible pop over everytime I develop a craving. Regards

Response of Georg Boomgaarden:

Sausages are not in Federal, but in Laender competence (states).

Just like translators and interpreters

Mind you, can a German not spell Rostbratwürste, or was it a joke?

From Laudator Temporis Acti, quoting Gerald Moore’s autobiography, The Unashamed Accompanist.

A young friend of mine was playing the accompaniment to me one day of Wolf’s song “Bitt’ ihn, O Mutter” (Beg Him, O Mother). This accompaniment is written with Wolf’s usual eloquence and urgency, but it was played by this young lady with such viciousness that I ventured to ask her if she knew what “Bitt’ ihn, O Mutter” meant. “Of course,” she replied. “It means ‘O Mother, bite him.'”

Thanks to Trevor.

Meanwhile, the Guardian has a series called Germany – The accidental empire, and today there has been an odd article and some discussion of the length of German words and people’s favourite ones (not necessarily long). I remember Jonathan Franzen saying he liked obwohl. I am not sure what one commenter‘s Dampfesse means. Of course, with all the Latin and Greek in English, we are protected from ghe directness of Durchfall.
I am fond of Prekariat.

There’s an article on the German Federal Constitutional Court on the Matrix Chambers eutopialaw blog, by a German law professor called Daniel Thym, which is really heavy going and I wonder if it was written in English or translated in the writer’s head from German.

Since first posting this, I have discovered that there is an original German text online (see notes at end). So I include it:

Nun lassen sich die Kritiker das Argument der Verfassungswidrigkeit nicht so schnell aus der Hand nehmen.

Critics won’t renounce at the argument that bailouts violate the German constitution single-handedly.

Der mediale Hype um die Bundestags-Abstimmungen zur Euro-Rettung sowie die BVerfG-Urteile zeigt, wie die verfassungsjuristische Stärkung des Nationalstaats in eine politische Alltagspraxis umschlägt, die ihrerseits eine diskursive und identifikatorische Stärkung der nationalstaatlichen Identität mit sich bringt.

Extensive media coverage, both domestic and international, of the German Constitutional Court judgments and parliamentary votes show that the fortification of domestic institutions by means of constitutional interpretation has an impact upon everyday political practices which bring about the discursive strengthening of national identity.

I’m afraid my constitutional-law translations might sound like this.

I’ve bought a book on copyright law, I think it was, before now where I only realized after I had got it that it was by a non-native speaker and too hard to read. I admire translators who understand how to mould German sentences into natural English ones, but I’m not sure I know enough about the art.

But there’s a following post by Peter Lindseth, who has written on the blog before, and that is fine as usual.

LATER NOTE: Ah, I see from Lindseth’s post that the Daniel Thym post was translated into English. That’s a relief, but it shouldn’t be! Here’s the original German.

Via The Guardian and Slate, a law professor analyses (verse 2 of) 99 Problems, a 2004 song by Jay-Z, from the point of view of criminal law: Caleb Mason, Saint Louis University School of Law, Fourth Amendment Guidance for Cops and Perps.

1. The year is ‘94 and in my trunk is raw
2. In my rearview mirror is the motherfucking law
3. I got two choices y’all, pull over the car or
4. Bounce on the double put the pedal to the floor
5. Now I ain’t trying to see no highway chase with jake
6. Plus I got a few dollars I can fight the case
7. So I . . . pull over to the side of the road
8. And I Heard “Son do you know what I’m stopping you for?”
9. “Cause I’m young and I’m black and my hat’s real low?
10. Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don’t know
11. Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo?”

99 Problems is a song by Jay-Z1. It’s a good song. It was a big hit in 2004. I’m writing about it now because it’s time we added it to the canon of criminal procedure pedagogy. In one compact, teachable verse (Verse 2), the song forces us to think about traffic stops, vehicle searches, drug smuggling, probable cause, and racial profiling, and it beautifully tees up my favorite pedagogical heuristic: life lessons for cops and robbers. And as it turns out, I’m not late to the game after all: Jay-Z recently published a well-received volume of criticism and commentary that includes his own marginal notes on Verse 2 of 99 Problems.

LATER NOTE: I don’t read much US criminal law so I had to look up suppression claim – suppression of evidence (Unterdrücken von Beweismaterial?). The article is helpful to drug dealers, who need to know in exactly which circumstances evidence produced in the search of a car can be suppressed by the court because the search was unlawful, and to police, who need to know that it’s best if the K-9 unit – vehicle with drug-sniffing dogs – is already there when the vehicle is stopped.

I know the purpose of a weblog is to spread sunshine and light rather than criticizing other people’s work. But I must comment on a German criminal law weblog’s suggestion of learning English criminal-law terminology.

Here’s what I wrote on Beleidigung in 2003:

In English and U.S. law, defamation is nearly always a tort, not a crime. It consists, loosely speaking, in communicating to a third party some fact about the victim that tends to lower his or her reputation among right-thinking people. If the fact is true, that is a complete defence. Thus, three people are needed. One form, libel, is in permanent form (often writing), and the other, slander, is not.
In German law, there is also defamation, and the word Diffamierung can be used. The two forms of defamation differ in seriousness, but both can be either permanent or impermanent, in speech or in writing. To distinguish them, therefore, libel and slander won’t do.
These two offences (üble Nachrede and Verleumdung) are part of a group of offences headed Beleidigung. These offences also include insult, for which only two people are needed, and a form of assault – if you indicate your disrespect for someone by spitting in their face, this is also covered, and I am calling it assault, although the problem with that is that the English reader may not realize its connection to insult. There are a couple of other offences, such as insulting the dead.

How, then, to translate the heading Beleidigung? I used to ask my students this question with the example of a list of crime statistics. My answer would have been Insult, assault and defamation.

Now, in the crime statistics summary, I find Insult, assault and battery. That is very good, but what has happened to the defamation? It has completely disappeared.

In the Federal Ministry of Justice’s translation of the Criminal Code (via German Law Archive), the heading for the group of offences is the misleading Insult, üble Nachrede is translated as malicious gossip (whereas it can be in writing or oral) and Verleumdung as defamation (which applies equally to both terms).

Now from strafrechtsblogger: Ihr wollt es doch auch! Englisch für Strafrechtler

and Ihr wollt es doch auch! Englisch für Strafrechtler II

recommending English equivalents for meetings with English-speaking clients.

I wondered what the source was – the translations of Criminal Code headings don’t correspond to the ‘official’ Bohlander translation or to that on the German Law Archive website, nor to the ancient US army translation I used to use. But apparently they come from a Bundespolizei document:

Die Übersetzungen stammen übrigens von einem Merkblatt der Bundespolizei und sind offenbar ausländer(straf)rechtlich besonders relevant.

Can anyone find that online? A quick look at www.bundespolizei.de did not produce it.

But the real problem is that German, English and U.S. (various) criminal law systems differ and you can’t just take one English term and treat it as if it meant the same as the original German.