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Robin Stocks at Carob reports very early on yesterday’s Federal Court of Justice judgment in favour of Karin Krieger.

He gives a translation of the Yahoo news report (in German). Krieger translated novels by Alessandro Baricco, a sort of watered-down mental pornography (I base this on one reading of Silk) that sells rather well and I believe is actually read (something one doubts about Lawrence Norfolk, whose Lemprière’s Dictionary appeared in a much-discussed German translation):

bq. After differences with Krieger, Piper Verlag announced in 1999 that it was withdrawing all works she had translated and having them retranslated prior to their reissue. This applied to three books published in German in the late 1990s – Silk, Castelli di Rabbia (Land aus Glas or Country of Glass in the German) and Novecento – plus two that had not yet been published: Ocean Sea and L’anima di Hegel e le Mucche des Wisconsin. Most of these were indeed subsequently republished in new translations.

I remember that one of these books appeared in a new translation but was advertised with the same quotes praising the German translation that had actually been made with reference to Krieger’s translation. Continue reading →

The German American Law Journal Blog has begun to describe German law blogs. It starts with Handakte WebLAWg and law blog, on June 14th, and continues on June 15th and June 16th (and thanks for the very complimentary description of Transblawg!)

Notes from the (Legal) Underground has (with permission) a PDF file of an article by Bill Domnarski that appeared in the California Lawyer on seven lawyer-novelists from California.

The article contains detailed tables in sidebars with a large number of facts on and quotes from each of the novelists discussed.

Notes from the (Legal) Underground occasionally takes on the role of an agony aunt and has already given advice to a would-be legal novelist:

bq. Dear Troubled,
Your problem is an easy one to diagnose. You are clearly not fit for the law, but you are also not fit for writing. Thus your initial instinct was correct. You should write a legal thriller.

Steak ‘n Shake (a name I will not try to interpret) is suing Burger King over the use of the word steakburger, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (one’s range of reading has been somewhat extended by the Internet). Burger King claims it is a generic term (via The Trademark Blog).

bq. Ronald Butters, a Duke linguist, testified that he had found the term in numerous newspaper advertisements by companies other than Steak ‘n Shake going back decades, at least one of them even before the company’s founding in 1934.

Sprüche für Übersetzer, aufgeschrieben:
Kevin Hendzel: Es ist leichter, jemandem beizubringen, wie man ein F-15 fliegt, als ihm Arabisch zu lehren. (Oder: Ein F-15 Fliegen ist leichter als Arabisch lernen?)
Mike Ellis: Der Stift ist teuerer als das Schwert.

Written down in the past from FLEFO at CompuServe, I presume:

Kevin Hendzel: It’s easier to train somebody to fly an F-14 than to speak Arabic.
Mike Ellis: The pen is more expensive than the sword.

I write these, like many other things, in this weblog so I can find them again if I need them. The first one is intended to convey to others how difficult translation and interpreting are. The problem with it is the association of Arabic, flying and September 11th, suggesting: But if they can already speak Arabic…

The second one has a certain something but is probably untrue.

Are there others?

BBC America has a website or pages called All About Britain.
(Via Language Log and Wordlab, both of which lack a comments function, and at Language Log, don’t forget to select ‘Open in new window’).

There is a Food Slang Quiz that looks to me like a food quiz. Pease pudding and black pudding can’t be slang, nor Marmite; perhaps they mean butty and fry-up? Ah well, it’s for Americans, not British.