Ahoy (or is that just Czech?).

I’ve been following the Hospital Food photoblog for some time now.

They collect photos of hospital food from all over the world.

Now the Independent reports on a British patient who is taking photos of his own hospital food because it is so horrible. He invites readers to guess what the meals are.

The blogger, who identifies himself as “Traction Man”, has been in hospital for 20 weeks undergoing treatment to correct skeletal problems. He says he was “struck down by a bone and flesh-eating bug”. To pass the time the 47-year-old has taken to provided a daily review of his meals – uploading photographs from his mobile phone.

The blog is Notes from a Hospital Bed. Here’s a hospital food bingo entry.

I’ve touched on this topic before.

In early August, there was a long article – in German – in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about the difference between Anglo-Saxon and angelsächsisch. It was on the occasion when President Sarkozy referred to his ‘Anglo-Saxon’ friends (obviously including President Obama, who would have stuck out a bit in the old days. It mentions an aspect I had overlooked: the US use of Anglo-Saxon in WASP.

Für die meisten Amerikaner ist Anglo-Saxon ein Synonym, eigentlich eine Metonymie, für WASP, ein negativ konnotierter soziologischer und politischer Neologismus aus den sechziger Jahren, der für White Anglo-Saxon Protestant steht. WASP sind Angehörige der oberen Mittelklasse und der oberen Zehntausend, die von den frühesten Siedlern abstammen und ihrem Selbstverständnis nach den wirtschaftlichen Wohlstand, das gesellschaftliche Ansehen und die politische Macht in den Vereinigten Staaten gleichsam aus naturgegebenem Recht kontrollieren. Nur diejenigen, die alle drei Eigenschaften (Ethnizität, kulturelles Erbe und Religion) vereinen, gehören zu dieser Gruppe. Juden, Katholiken, Schwarze, mexikanisch-, asiatisch-, italienisch- und irischstämmige Amerikaner sind ebenso wenig WASPs wie die indianische Urbevölkerung – und auch nicht die deutschstämmigen Amerikaner.

Thanks to Marisa Manzin

There are conventional German equivalents of numerous fixed expressions in English legalese. Dietl-Lorenz, for example, has:

in witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand: zum Zeugnis dessen habe ich diese Urkunde eigenhändig unterschrieben

and Romain:

in witness whereof: zu Urkund dessen

I prefer ‘zu Urkund dessen’ – I think it’s closer to the meaning.

Does anyone use a simpler translation?

The question of plain English is indirectly raised by the TransLegal Legal English blog, which suggests an improvement:

Try a straightforward closing like this:

THE PARTIES, INTENDING TO BE LEGALLY BOUND, have executed this agreement on the date first set forth above.”

This still looks pretty unstraightforward to me (set forth is a normal American expression, British set out, but it still sounds rather lawyerly to me). But yes, being legally bound is the main point. There is also a criticism that ‘the year of our Lord’ is objectionable for religious reasons, and that ‘witness’ implies that there were witnesses (this is a misunderstanding of ‘in witness whereof’)

Doonan and Foster, in Drafting, 2001, (an impression of an earlier version is given in Google Books) recommend:

These incantations may be revised to:
Executed as a deed on …
Or:
Signed and delivered as a deed on…
Or:
The parties have signed this document as a deed on …

(This assumes English law, where a deed has a special meaning)

Plain English books can be useful where they make it clear whether the two words in a doublet are synonyms or not, or what the meaning of fixed expressions is. (I’m not so sure that law can be written completely in plain English).