The Special Translation Tool/Die Besondere Übersetzungshilfe

I’ve mentioned Jerry (Gerold) Harfst’s book Die Besondere Übersetzungshilfe before , but now I can present some pages from it to show what it’s like.

The book is a criminal law glossary divided into three sections: in the first, the German terms are arranged by order of paragraph number: that is, first comes the Betäubungsmittelgesetz with entries from 1 to 39, then the Jugendgerichtsgesetz, Ordnungswidrigkeitengesetz, Strafgesetzbuch, Strafprozessordnung, Strafvollzugsgesetz, Straßenverkehrsgesetz, Straßenverkehrsordnung, and Waffengesetz.

Second comes a German-English glossary, and third an English-German glossary. In each of these, the section numbers are given in the margin.

Thus an interpreter in court might want to use the section arranged by paragraph numbers, for instance in a case about drugs.

Example:

P. 38: StGB 242 Diebstahl: larceny (the US term for theft)
p. 122: Diebstahl: larceny (StGB-242)
p. 239: larceny: Diebstahl (StGB-242)

Click on pictures to enlarge:

harfst38w.jpg

harfst122w.jpg

harfst-239w.jpg

The quality of the printing is good, unlike my scans, which are reduced to make smaller files. More information and ordering here.

Doorbells and weblogs

Stuart Mudie asks in a comment to the last entry whether I’m trying to compete with Andrew Losowsky. Well, I had not seen his doorbell pictures although I had heard of Barçablog.

Anyway, I can’t say at the moment when I took my first doorbell photo, but it was before the first posted here on September 16th 2003. And I see that was about the time Andrew started noticing the Florence doorbells. On September 21 2004 he writes:

Nearly a year ago, I was wondering around Florence and found myself unnecessarily fascinated by a single aspect of that Renaissance city of incredible art and breathtaking architecture: the doorbells.

He adds a short fiction to each picture now (here’s an example – being a literal sort of person, I was disappointed by a fiction).

I am not trying to say Look I was first! I just don’t want people thinking I got the idea from a famous and trendy blogger.

door4w.jpg

door5w.jpg

(Nürnberg)

Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache

Die Zeit provides Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache online – reported by Handakte WebLAWg

An der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften wurde Anfang März 2003 durch das Projekt “Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS)” das größte frei zugängliche, online abfragbare Wörterbuch für die deutsche Sprache zur Testbenutzung frei geschaltet.