Via the Universal Language blog, an article in Newhouse News Service entitled ‘English is Language of Business, but Americans Aren’t Fluent’.

bq. On a flight from Tokyo to Bangkok, an Indonesian woman speaking fractured English couldn’t make herself understood to an American flight attendant.
But a Japanese passenger could tell what the Indonesian woman was saying.

One should avoid words with several meanings when speaking international English, for example check/cheque, right, plant, and also phrasal verbs and idioms.

It sounds to me as if we should all learn a form of pidgin to speed up the process.

This is something I worry about when I see a series of books published in Germany, in English, entitled ‘German law accessible’.

Perhaps more sociology than law –

bq. Although there is a great deal of informal griping about the long lines for women’s toilets in many public facilities, there is not that much detailed information. In particular, because men and women rarely compare detailed notes about toilet facilities, there seems to be a tendency on the part of both sexes to assume that an equal number of toilet facilities are available to men and women, but women simply take longer, resulting in longer lines. In fact, however, most older public toilets do not seem to offer anything like equality of opportunity to men and women.

People who go out in a mixed group can do the survey posted at the University of Chicago Law School site. It should be interesting if only just to make the comparison, which we don’t usually do.

Via the blawg review.
I suspect it’s only intended for the USA, but it doesn’t say so.

I have just received the 2003/2004 catalogue of St. Jerome Publishing in the UK. It should all be available at their website (I’m afraid the web address on p. 2 of the catalogue is wrong – it has ac instead of co). St. Jerome is the patron saint of translators, which puzzles some Germans until they are told he is Hieronymus in German. They send books mail order, postage included in Europe.
The catalogue also contains books on translation from other publishing houses, which is nice.
The series I have three of is called Translation Practices Explained and is rather down-to-earth (there is another series called Translation Theories Explained, which I am also interested in). I have:

Enrique Alcaraz and Brian Hughes, Legal Translation Explained
Brian Mossop, Revising and Editing for Translators
and
Emma Wagner, Svend Bech and Jesús M. Martinez, Translating for the European Union Institutions

The rest of the series consists of a book on court interpreting, one on conference interpreting, one on electronic tools for translators (but dated 2001), and one on translating official documents, which is dated July 2003 and which interests me because I am a sworn translator and sometimes do this kind of translating.

More about Legal Translation Explained:
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I haven’t posted any photos for a while, so here is one of the building next door – originally the same building, where someone has more plants than I have. How I hate cleaning those windows (as far as I remember).

www.llrx.com has updated its guide to the federal legal system. A nice thing about the updates at LLRX is that they highlight the changed sections.
There is a link to a PDF file describing the U.S. federal court system. It’s available not only in English, but also in French, Russian, Serbian and Turkish (what, no Croatian?!)
There’s even a link to a tutorial on researching administrative law, which is more than I need myself.

Marita Marcano, is a translator from English, French and Spanish to German based in the USA. Together with Ursula Sauer in Germany, she works under the name of MM Translations Inc. I ‘know’ Marita from the pt translators’ group at www.yahoogroups.de.

Marita found the English pages of her website had been copied by a translation agency in Korea.

The copy was rather faithful to the original, even leaving the firm name in one place, and claiming that interpreting is available only in the Kansas city area. Here is an example:

Original (formatting removed):

bq. Update to the new German spelling
On July 1, 1996 the political representatives of German-speaking countries signed a common declaration about the reform of the German spelling rules. The reform took effect on August 1, 1998. There is a transitional period until July 31, 2005, in which the old and new spellings are allowed to coexist. After that only the new spelling rules will be valid.
For more information on the new German spelling go to Related Links.
With all your German documentation updated
you will be up to date linguistically
all of your materials will be consistent in appearance and spelling

Korean copy:

bq. Update to the new Korean spelling
On July 1, 1996 the political representatives of Korean-speaking countries signed a common declaration about the reform of the Korean spelling rules. The reform took effect on August 1, 1998. There is a transitional period until July 31, 2005, in which the old and new spellings are allowed to coexist. After that only the new spelling rules will be valid.
For more information on the new Korean spelling go to Related Links.
With all your Korean documentation updated
you will be up to date linguistically
all of your materials will be consistent in appearance and spelling