I don’t like those Google ads that come up when you’re searching for some specific book and lead you to ebay or somewhere like that, where they tell you they haven’t got it. But the following is amusing: it appeared when I was looking at the law section of the Times Online

bq. Legal Profession Sale
New & used Legal Profession Check out the deals now!
www.eBay.com

It did produce a lot of Buy It Now ads, mainly for books, but no sale of The Legal Profession as such.

The Language Guy is a new weblog by Mike Geis, who describes himself as a retired linguist. To judge from his profile, he may write something about law and language.

bq. I wrote “The Language of Television Advertising,” “The Language of Politics,” and “Speech Acts and Conversational Interaction.” I also wrote and consulted on linguistic issues arising in such legal domains as trademark law, deceptive advertising, and jury instructions in death penalty cases.

(via Language hat, who had it from Aldiboronti at Wordorigins, which is always worth looking at)

There is terminology of professions and occupations regulated in the EU at this address. The terms are also translated (between French, German and English). The list appears to be new. Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland are also included, but not all the EU states’ terms are there, in particular those of the new states.

Of course, regulated professions is a narrow category. I looked at Rechtsanwalt. I would have thought it was not translated, since a Rechtsanwalt is a Rechtsanwalt. But no, it is translated into French as avocat and into English as lawyer/barrister. Why do solicitors not get a look in? Surely everyone knows solicitors’ exams are harder than barristers’? (I’d better close the comments). And then there are advocates. And Notare in Germany. Well, it is apparently the duty of the country involved to report the professions. Perhaps that hasn’t been done yet in the UK.

(Via Handakte WebLAWg)

End 2004 tauchte das Problem der Klingeltonabonnements in Großbritannien auf, jetzt scheint es gelöst – BBC-News-Artikel.

Mr Flynn said that the move to using subscriptions happened over the space of a few weeks at the end of 2004.

Websites such as grumbletext.co.uk started getting reports from customers who were racking up large bills for phone content they did not know they had signed up for.

“What made us uncomfortable was that these services were not being marketed transparently,” said Mr Flynn. “People did not know they were being offered a subscription service.”

Ein Verhaltenskodex wurde Mitte Januar eingeführt und konnte durchgesetzt werden.

The drafting of the new rules was led by the Mobile Entertainment Forum and the UK’s phone firms.

“Everyone is required to conform to this code of conduct,” said Andrew Bud, regulatory head of the MEF and executive chairman of messaging firm MBlox.

Interessant für Leser von Spreeblick und Kunden von Jamba.

Und jetzt eine Frage für eine Freundin, die ein neues Handy hat und gerne ein “normales” Klingeln hätte, und lieber was monophones. Ich habe zwar durch langwieriges Suchen ein “Klingeln – altes Telefon – brrrng brrrng” oder so ähnlich gefunden, aber wo findet man so einen Ton? Der Hersteller (Samsung) konnte nicht weiterhelfen.

The difficulties of translation, technical translation for example, are often understated. Here is one that only an expert could manage.

(Via Desbladet)

What on earth is this ‘dictionary’?

Here it is on translator. There are seven pictures of translators, none of which are me.

Very bizarre. If you click on ‘references’, you are taken to amazon.com. We know ‘Webster’s’ has no particular meaning. But apparently part of this is Merriam Webster’s. The credits page is under construction. The ‘About Us’ page is more expansive:

Our mission is to create the largest dictionary of modern language usage (the equivalent of 500 encyclopedias). The dictionary will soon consist of over 400 modern languages, and 10 ancestral languages, with some 30 million individual entries across languages (including expressions, technical terminologies, and words). The languages included are read or spoken by over 95 percent of the world’s population. The world’s largest dictionary should be free to consult by all persons of the world, via the Internet.