The German-English translation site Linguee has recently corrected something I have complained about here and here.

This was the fact that the results page did not show the names of the sites referred to. To find that out, one had to click through, which might mean thirty or forty clicks a page.

The reason we need to see the name of the site quickly is because it’s extra evidence that the English comes from a German site, and may therefore be translatorese.

Now, Linguee shows the URL after each hit, which is a great improvement and is a quick response to criticisms.

Admittedly, it does confirm that most of the DE>EN translations are on German sites, a basic fact I was too stupid to realize before. However, a URL containing the name of a big international law or accountancy firm is a good sign that at least the terminology work may be reliable.

Fabio M. Said, in fidus interpres, links to MyMemory, which is like Linguee but covers more languages. It also invites user input (I would not like to upload my private client work) and permits download as TMX, which sounds interesting. However, the memory appears to be very small in comparison with Linguee’s, as far as German-English is concerned. Might be interesting for other languages.

There are a number of sites on the Web that list translation weblogs.

The Polyglot blog has just published its updated long list. What language the blogs are in is not always clear, but it’s easy to click through and check.

Recently, mygengo.com has been adding a page for each of a number of translation weblogs. Here’s the list, and here is the page for Transblawg. This list might be an easier place to start, as it’s growing but not yet as long as the Polyglot one.

As far as my blog is concerned, they have definitely made the effort of reading it and actually point out that a knowledge of German would be useful (because I don’t translate all the German I quote and some of my links are German). They also have tags like ‘German’ so one can narrow down the list, and they supply an RSS link, for example, for each blog.

The London Review Blog has a nice game:

Think of a book. Then imagine someone other than the author who might – or could never – have written it.

Fear of Flying by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Party Going by Marcel Proust
I Married a Communist by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Lucky Jim by Jane Austen

More in the comments.

Toytown Germany have been discussing German food and whether it is anything to write home about.

I eat German food, sure, I live here, and I don’t not enjoy it, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever eaten much that I don’t like. My favourite dish is just simple old roast pork with beer sauce and whacking great potato dumplings, but quite honestly, apart from that and weisswurst, there is little that I’d “write home about”. Oh, and the bread? The bread can go fuck itself. Hamster food bound together with brown cement, with more hamster food tipped on top, then a shitload of caraway seeds. Gimme a fresh baguette instead.

As for the bread, the beauty of German bread is that if you don’t want to eat it, which I don’t, you can always use it as a beer mat!

There is some excellent bread around, in specialist bakers, if you can avoid (or if you like) the sometimes medicinal combinations of added seeds (caraway is referred to above). Within Germany there’s some criticism of standard bread mixes that many bakeries buy ready-made-up and sometimes rather old. I tend to eat the bread if it tastes good.

But nowadays I always ask if the multi-grain loaf contains sunflower seeds. One baker’s near here that used to be good has no heavier bread that isn’t full of them. If I have to have foreign bodies in my bread, I will go for the ciabatta with peperoni or olives.

The following is a quote from the newsletter sent out recently by a translation company:

Satte Rabatte bei (name of company)

Den Lesern dieses Newsletters machen wir ein Sommergeschenk. Für Übersetzungen ins britische Englisch, die in der Zeit vom 20. Juli bis 20. August 2009 in Auftrag gegeben werden, gewähren wir 10 % Lese Leser-Rabatt auf unseren Stundensatz! Wie’s kommt? Unsere Briten räumen uns sommerlich günstige Konditionen ein, die wir gern an unsere Leser weitergeben. Wie immer sind nur bestens qualifizierte Native Speaker am Werk!”

(A summer present for the readers of this newsletter. Translations into British English ordered between 20 July and 20 August 2009 will be reduced by 10%. How can we do this? Our British translators are giving us special summer prices, and we are happy to pass these on to our readers. As ever, only native speakers with the highest qualifications will be doing the translations!)

There aren’t any British translators named on the website. I suppose some will be sought.

I suppose the company is in trouble and wants to lure more customers in this way. It’s not clear why translators would offer price cuts, and if anything, summer is a time when it’s harder to find a translator.

(Received from a British colleague)

Bundesrat corrects EU translation error
In Bundesrat korrigiert Fehler des EU-Übersetzungsdienstes (original German text here) on Richard Schneider’s site, it is reported that the Bundesrat, in its last session before the summer break, corrected a translation error made by the EU translation service.

They were implementing Council Directive 2005/47/EC on the Agreement between the Community of European Railways (CER) and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) on certain aspects of the working conditions of mobile workers engaged in interoperable cross-border services in the railway sector in German law.

Mit der Eisenbahn-Fahrpersonalverordnung wird die EU-Richtlinie 2005/47/EG in deutsches Recht umgesetzt. Diese Richtlinie regelt insbesondere Dienstzeiten, Ruhepausen und Ruhezeiten der Lokführer im internationalen Verkehr. Sie sieht in ihrem französischen Urtext vor, dass Eisenbahnverkehrsunternehmer dafür Sorge tragen müssen, dass Lokführer nach einer auswärtigen Ruhezeit eine Ruhezeit an ihrem „Dienstort“ verbringen. Durch einen Übersetzungsfehler ist in der deutschen Fassung der EU-Richtlinie nicht von einer Ruhezeit am „Dienstort“, sondern am „Wohnort“ die Rede. Das Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung hatte in seinem Verordnungsentwurf den Übersetzungsfehler in das deutsche Recht übernehmen wollen. Der Bundesrat hat nun diesen Fehler behoben, indem er den Verordnungsentwurf des Bundesministeriums für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung entsprechend korrigiert und eine Rückkehr an den Dienstort vorgesehen hat.

It says here that the ‘original French version’ requires arrangements to be made for train drivers, after a rest period away, to have a daily rest period at their ‘place of work’ (DE Dienstort). This was translated into German as ‘place of residence’ (Wohnort).

Of course these versions are supposed to be parallel and equally valid, without any reference to a ‘French original’.

But the reference to place of residence would have meant train drivers who worked hundreds of miles away from home having to return there regularly.

I haven’t been able to trace the relevant passage. The English directive is on EUR-Lex, and so is the German, but the bilingual display isn’t working at the moment.