Category Archives: translation

Tidy desk seminar/”Mein Schreibtisch, frei und aufgeräumt”

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This is not a description of my desk but the title of the seminar for translators I went to in Munich on Saturday. It was about keeping your desk tidy. Of course, an untidy desk is a symptom rather than a disease.

Here is a picture of a translator’s desk that looks a bit tidier than its title suggests. It’s probably the desk of someone who’s already attended such a seminar. In an ordinary office, we learnt, this pencil stand (Stiftbehälter) would be full of bent paperclips, rusty nails and pencils that no longer write. But I can’t see anything really extraneous, although the wall looks promising.

The trainer was Gunter Meier, who has a company website (more E+E – details there of his book on dealing with email too). People who work in offices have more chance to hear about this kind of thing. It’s a shame so few people attended – apparently there were 30 in Aschaffenburg. Probably there’s just too much else to do in Munich.

There was a list of common reasons why it’s hard to throw stuff away, from trivial to neurotic. I found these interesting for reasons I won’t go into. Also: need for archives; analysis of usual use of office space; how to avoid using post-it notes.

There was a reference to the way that old stuff carries old associations and you can only think new thoughts if you get rid of these ‘anchors’: the same old pictures, objects on desk, cuddly toys and so on. I saw these 10 seriously cool workplaces last week, and this reminded me. I particularly liked the slide to go from floor to floor, but I suppose that wouldn’t make me more productive.

St. Isidore

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St. Isidore is the patron saint of the Internet, according to an entry in h2g2 (the BBC’s pre-Wikipedia Wikipedia) on Cool patron saints.

Catholic Online has written a prayer for those using the Internet, asking for St Isidore’s intercession:

Almighty and eternal God,
who has created us in Thy image
and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful,
especially in the divine person
of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
grant we beseech Thee that,
through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor,
during our journeys through the Internet
we will direct our hands and eyes
only to that which is pleasing to Thee
and treat with charity and patience
all those souls whom we encounter.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

And St. Clare is apparently the patron saint of television:

Before she died in 1253, she became too ill to attend daily mass. As she lay in her bed, she would see visions of the mass on the wall of her cell, just like there was a TV. Pretty cool, huh?

Yes, I’m researching terminology on a Cistercian church.

Interview with Henry Pavlovich on chartered linguists

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Céline has posted an interview with Henry Pavlovich from the latest edition of The Linguist. He mentions the criteria being discussed.

As this is an achievement and mark of approbation for the profession of linguists as a whole, membership of any ONE approved professional body in the language field (eg IoL, ITI, AIIC) will be sufficient.

This still begs the question of why a charter should be granted to the profession of linguist, which I take to mean language teacher, translator or interpreter (in the USA it would be taken to mean a specialist in linguistics too).

Those who think it would be good to be a chartered translator still think it odd that the IoL should have the charter, since the ITI came into existence, apparently, because the IoL thought the translators’ group in the IoL was getting a bit above itself.

Translation in The Guardian

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Bild

Eva Braun wollte zehn weitere Frauen haben, die aber wegen der totalen Mobilmachung … nicht sofort zu Stelle waren. Darüber beklagte sie sich bei Hitler. Der war empört und herrschte Bormann zornig an: ‚Ich stampfe ganze Divisionen aus dem Boden. Da müßte es doch ein leichtes sein, ein paar Mädels für meinen Berghof zu beschaffen! Organisieren Sie das!‘“

Guardian:

…on one occasion, he flew into a rage when it proved difficult to hire 10 more serving girls. “I stamp whole divisions into the dirt!” screamed Hitler. “And I can’t get a few more serving sluts for the Berghof?”

Bild:

Als es um die Aufmachung der Damen ging, scherzte Hitler über Eva Brauns Lippenstift, der Spuren an der Serviette hinterließ. Lachend meinte er, jetzt, in der Kriegszeit, stelle man Lippenstiftersatz aus Tierkadavern her.“

Guardian:

He would laugh at Eva’s lipstick on a serviette and then say, ‘During wartime lipstick is produced out of dead bodies.'”

Bild is not the source of the Guardian quotes, but it looks as if the German both report on has got mangled a bit (bold by MM).

(Thanks to the GerNet list on the ITI)

As amended/In der Fassung von

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Sind die Wörter “in der jeweiligen Fassung” bei einem Gesetz notwendig (auf Englisch)?

Corp Law Blog has another interesting entry on language. The question is: If you quote a statute ‘as amended’, what do the words ‘as amended’ add?

And how do you interpret Section 1 of the Securities Act of 1933, which tells us that the short title of the Securities Act of 1933 is the “Securities Act of 1933” (no reference to “as amended”)?

The comments are interesting too – and even Sydney Carton contributed.

The question is whether a short title means the statute at the date of a contract, for example, or the statute in all its subsequent amendments.

Robert Schwartz’s comment ends:

Clients just hate hearing lawyers argue about shit like that at $500 @ hr. Another reason I have forbiden my children from going to law school.
Have you noticed that secretaries often corect the title of the Act to The Securities Act of 1993?

And Gary comments, inter alia:

It is interesting to note that most “sophisticated” transaction documents have a lengthy section of defined terms but they often give short shrift to rules of construction. In particularly complex transactions, I include the following within a section containing rules of construction:

“Any reference to any federal, state, local, or foreign statute or law includes (1) all rules and regulations promulgated thereunder and (2) such statute or law as amended, modified or supplemented from time to time (including any successor statute or law).”

Translating titles

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Translating titles is a huge topic. I just want to refer to a couple.

One is the translation of film titles into German. The German ones are often strangely graphic. But I see Lost in Translation has not been translated. A curious one last year was the translation of Rabbit Proof Fence (English) into Long Way Home (German) (what I mean is, they left it in English but changed the English).

I recently read Atul Gawande’s Complications, a doctor’s story of what can go wrong in surgery, what to tell patients, how surgeons make guesses and so on. I wondered if it would have a market in Germany. I find it has been translated as Die Schere im Bauch (The scissors in the abdomen) by Susanne Kuhlmann-Krieg. I find that really does the book an injustice, reducing it to the most sensationalist level. Not that the title was necessarily chosen by the translator – titles are usually chosen by the publisher (and they are protected as trade marks, I believe).

LATER NOTE: Here is a good essay on German film titles:

The more inane the film the zanier the title: the flop courtroom farce “Jury Duty”, for instance, was inflated to Chaos! Schwiegersohn Junior im Gerichtssaal (Chaos! Son-in-Law Junior in the Courtroom). … Laurel and Hardy entirely sacrificed their names to the exigencies of zany titling, becoming the comedy team Dick and Doof – “Fat and Stupid” – in German. Thus “The Flying Deuces” are Dick and Doof in der Fremden Legion (Fat and Stupid in the Foreign Legion), and \Way out West” is Dick und Doof im Wilden Westen (Fat and Stupid in the Wild West).