Einwandfreie englische Computer-Übersetzung.

Professor Lenz comments on my OneLook entry:

bq. Okay, this is off topic, but it might be of interest to note for you that the problem of computer translations has finally been solved completely and anyone can now get perfect English translations here. (Found at discourse.net).

It looks surprisingly good, although I must admit it’s not my direction. It does other languages too, including Greek.

Meanwhile, another comment under ‘Mother tongue standard’ establishes that the way to tell if you’re a native speaker is if you know it yourself:

bq. It is very hard to define native competence. In fact, it’s a quality that only the person in question knows for sure whether he or she has it or not.

Two huge translation problems solved, with the help of comments! I’ve had so much comment spam this week, but it’s been worth keeping comments open.

Anfang September 2004 startete der Law Society of England and Wales, die Anwaltskammer für Solicitor, eine Werbekampagne mit dem Spruch “My hero, my solicitor“. Das kann nur schiefgehen!

Die drei Plakate kann man als PDF-Dateien sehen, wenn man auf die PDF-Icons unter dem Link oben klickt.

At the beginning of September 2004, the Law Society of England and Wales, the solicitors’ professional body, started a pilot advertising campaign with the slogan ‘My hero, my solicitor‘. The Law Society wrote:

bq. The ads will appear at London Bridge and Euston underground stations, and York, Leamington Spa and Newcastle-upon-Tyne mainline stations for four weeks from 6 September or 13 September.
In market research, 73% of those questioned found the ads believable and seven out of ten said they were helpful in telling people how to find a solicitor. A wider campaign may follow the pilot.

There are three posters, one for business law, one for employment law, and one for family law (see PDF files at above link). They’re a bit multicultural – is it harder to imagine a black or Chinese solicitor not caring?

The campaign was used by the Observer as the introduction to a story on complaints against solicitors yesterday, and no doubt it will provide many more happy associations of this kind.

Someone on Compuserve recommended the One Look Reverse Dictionary.

There are two kinds of reverse dictionary. In this kind, you enter some general phrases to remind you of a specific word.

The díctionary allows you to:

find words from their definition
explore related concepts
create a list of words in a category
answer basic questions (e.g. what is the capital of Vietnam?
solve crossword clues using wildcards

It apparently indexes hundreds of other online reference sites.

I have such a dictionary in print form, dated early 1990s.
Reader’s Digest Reverse Dictionary, 1989, ISBN 0 276 49541 1
Bizarrely, this was ‘translated’ into German:
Der schnelle Weg zum richtigen Wort, ADAD-Verlag, 1992, ISBN 3 87003 473 4

There are also reverse dictionaries that classify words by their endings, so that a group of words ending in ‘erely’ will be together.

Is there one of those online? There must be. All I have is a GDR one, Martin Lehnert’s Rückläufiges Wörterbuch der englischen Gegenwartssprache, VEB Leipzig 1971. The first three words are a, baa, sahaa, and the last buzz, abuzz, fuzz.

LATER NOTE: For those who found this information exciting, I must say I discovered I have already blogged it: my mind must be going.

STILL LATER NOTE: As Abnu points out in the comments (in a discussion as to which of us has not had enough coffee today), the OneLook dictionary can be used to find patterns and thus does the work of a rückläufiges Wörterbuch. Here are the results of a search for *nch.

The whole knotty problem of deciding who is a native speaker (Muttersprachler) of the target language, and whether a translator can have two native languages and how to tell, is neatly sliced through in an advertisement for a patent translator to translate mainly into English in the Süddeutsche Zeitung:

bq. The translation department in our Munich office is seeking a qualified TRANSLATOR with English to mother tongue standard to start as soon as possible. …

bq. We are looking for a translator with a careful and conscientious working manner who enjoys a challenge.

bq. … we are offering you an attractive and responsible position as part of an international team.

I wonder how you test ‘mother tongue standard’.

(found on the pt group at Yahoo, thanks to Silke)

But in the USA, the ironworkers have taken over the topping-out ceremony, wood or no wood.

A page at Columbia University (taken from The Ironworker) gives the history of the topping-out ceremony:

bq. At one time, Europe was covered with a vast forest. Those who inhabited the forest were dependent on trees for their survival. …

bq. Scandinavian mythology suggests that humans originated from trees and our souls returned to the trees after death, giving each tree a spirit of its own.

bq. Humans began constructing their shelter with wood. Before cutting a tree, they would formally address the forest, reminding it of the consideration they had always shown toward the trees and asking the forest to grant use of a tree for construction of their home. When the house was complete, the topmost leafy branch of the tree used would be set atop the roof so that the tree spirit would not be rendered homeless. The gesture was supposed to convince the tree spirit of the sincere appreciation of those building the home. …

bq. The custom of placing a tree on a completed structure came with immigrants to the United States and became an integral part of American culture in barnraisings and housewarmings.

This takes me back to learning Russian at Berlin University with Siegfried Tornow, who must have done linguistics and told stories about bears and trees in Indo-European times. (This was in 1967-68 – I wonder how old he is now?)

Last week I was invited to the topping-out ceremony (Richtfest) of the multi-storey car park they’ve been building opposite my office since January.

But then we were told it wasn’t a real Richtfest. As some translators know (and others don’t), there is a sequence of building trades (Gewerke) in a building project.

For instance, the sequence might be (in part): piling, drainage and sewage, masonry, roofing, plastering, rainwater plumbing. gast and water mains, painting and decoration.
Trades in English here, in German here.

For a Richtfest to take place, the carpenters have to come in and make a timbered roof. There are no wooden beams in the car park, so no tree on top.

The Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch defines Gewerk as Zunft (guild).

This picture does not show the beer, which was in large quantities elsewhere. And I didn’t stay for the food, as I was working.
The speaker is Thomas Jung, the Oberbürgermeister of Fürth, whom some would apparently translate as Lord Mayor (there was a recent discussion on pt of how to translate Oberbürgermeisterin without making her sound like a mayor’s wife). Someone said Senior Mayor for Oberbürgermeister (there is a Bürgermeister too).