Fotos und Musik – Willi Astor, von Fab von Odd-Fish, über Mosaikum.

Es hat was.

Wie es gemacht wird, bei Rufposten.

I have already mentioned some translations into English of Austrian statutes.

Here are some more. I was wondering if the Austrian Bundeswettbewerbsbehörde had given itself an English name. I discovered its site is mildly allergic to Firefox and it has an English section which is still being worked on, with some courtesy translations. They have the Wettbewerbsgesetz and the Kartellgesetz 1988 there in English. There is also an English summary of Austrian merger and notification procedure.

Spiegel Online berichtet: “Fall Diana wird neu aufgerollt”. Ich dachte zuerst, das sei übertrieben, aber anscheinend ist der Fall tatsächlich erstmal vom Coroner ganz an die Polizei übergeben.

Wie hier berichtet, müssen gewisse Todesfälle in Großbritannien, und sogar im Ausland, von einem britischen Coroner untersucht werden. Das Inquest wurde erst im Januar 2004 eröffnet, nachdem die französischen Ermittlungen zu Ende waren. Bis dahin gab es kaum Beweise, und die französischen Behörden durften die Beweise lange nicht freigeben.

Hier gibt es eine Erklärung des ganzen auf Englisch (der zuständige Coroner erklärt die Hintergründe bei der Eröffnung, Januar 2004):

bq. 34. I am aware that there is speculation that these deaths were not the result of a sad, but relatively straight forward, road traffic accident in Paris. I have asked the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to make inquiries. The results of these inquiries will help me to decide whether such matters will fall within the scope of the investigation carried out at the inquests.

bq. 35. The police in England will be asked to see and interview, on my behalf, those who are identified as possible witnesses to find out the extent of their evidence and whether it is relevant to the English inquests. Only once that process has been completed can I consider who can help the inquest process by attending as witnesses.

Was jetzt in Paris geschieht, ist allerdings die Arbeit nicht vom Coroner, sondern von der Polizei (Scotland Yard).

Siehe auch BBC News:

bq. An inquest into the Princess’s death opened in the UK last year. … However, it was adjourned for the then Scotland Yard Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, to begin an investigation into the accident.

…

bq. Sir John is still technically in charge of the investigation but was not in Paris on Tuesday night for the latest stage in the proceedings, Scotland Yard said.

(Über kielanwalt’s mepHisto-BLAWg – Apostrophe dort)

Waggish writes about the translation of Proust and the emulation of computer games. I enjoyed his put-down of Hofstadter’s version of Eugene Onegin:

bq. I’d also direct true believers to Douglas Hofstadter’s translation of Eugene Onegin, which begins:

My uncle, matchless moral model,
When deathly ill, learned to make,
His friends respect him, bow and coddle–
Of all his ploys, that takes the cake.

bq. Whatever has survived, I doubt it’s Pushkin. Maybe you could amend the phrasing to be, “a great writer survives any faithful, competent translation,” but that introduces two subjective adjectives into the equation, of the “I know it when I see it” category.

Waggish links to an article by Wyatt Mason in The New Republic, comparing translations of Proust, but with a short history of translation tacked on the front. I liked the reference to Nabokov writing ‘better’ translations into an English version of Kafka’s Die Verwandlung:

bq. Look at his copy, for example, of an early translation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Nabokov has very nearly interlineated the entirety of the text with alternate wordings of the translator’s lines. One can file the corrections neatly into the three classes of evil he would enumerate in his sermon from this magazine. He amends errors of ignorance: “The old charwoman calls him ‘dung beetle’ (not ‘cockroach’ as in this idiotic translation).” He restitutes words the translator has skipped (“rain could be heard falling on the panes” becomes “rain drops could be heard striking the tin of the sill’s outer border”). And he explains the motive behind homely renovations he makes to vilely beautified phrases: “There is a wonderful flowing rhythm here in these dreamy sequences of sentences. He is half-awake–he realizes his plight without surprise, with a childish acceptance of it, and at the same time he still clings to human memories, human experiences.”

Waggish quotes Jeff Vavosour’s cry of despair when the emulations of Atari games were criticized for quirks that were in the originals.

bq. Do I hear an echo of Nabokov’s famously stringent attitudes toward translation here? There is no tolerance for variation in emulation, and this is because any competent game player’s experience is located in details as small as the ones that Nabokov finds in the rhythms and sounds of words.

(Via wood s lot, who inter alia reposts some material on translation)

The Fürther Nachrichten must be at the forefront of language change. I admit that Google finds over 1200 Busstopps in Germany, but some of those refer to London, some to the name used for the map of bus parking areas in Berlin, and some to a genuine stopping of buses (e.g “Busstopp am Bußtag“)

Heute soll die Entscheidung des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte zum McDonalds-Beleidungsverfahren verkündet werden:

Steel and Morris v. United Kingdom (no. 68416/01)
The case concerns an application brought by two United Kingdom nationals, Helen Steel and David Morris, who were born in 1965 and 1954 respectively and live in London. They were both ordered to pay damages in respect of a phamplet entitled “What’s wrong with McDonald’s?”.

The applicants complain, under Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) of the Convention, that the proceedings were unfair, principally because they were denied legal aid, and, under Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) of the Convention, that the proceedings and their outcome constituted a disproportionate interference with their right to freedom of expression.

BBC News article summarizing the case.

Hier ein kritischer Artikel zum englischen “Verleumdungs”-Recht. Ich habe mich nicht mit dem Thema “Wie schlimm ist das englische Beleidigungsrecht?” auseinandergesetzt, aber zum Wortschatz ist der Artikel nicht irreführend:

“Libel” heißt so viel wie schriftliche Verleumdung, und das umstrittene Schriftstück wird hierzulande auch als Schmähschrift bezeichnet. “Slander” ist der britische Rechtsbegriff für eine mündliche Beleidigung oder Verleumdung. “Libel” fällt somit wie “Slander” unter das britische Verleumdungsgesetz. Rechtsgrundlage für Verleumdungsklagen bietet also dieses Gesetz – der so genannte “Defamation Act” (auf Deutsch Diffamierungsgesetz). Auf dem Papier sieht dieser “Defamation Act” durchaus fair aus. Auf das Gesetz kann sich jeder berufen, der der Meinung ist, seinem Ruf sei durch Äußerungen anderer geschadet worden.

Libel ist meist schriftlich, auf jeden Fall in dauerhafter Form, einschließlich Film (ich glaube, das ist eine etwas breitere Definition als in den USA).