Rudolf Hermstein: Chandler verschandelt, oder
Das luftgetriebene Riesenhorn

In 1976, when Hellmuth Karasek’s translation of Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake appeared, I wasn’t living in Germany.

That may explain why I am so late to hear about other translators’ reactions to it, albeit not too late to hear Karasek holding forth about literature – and translation – on the box.

At least at that time, Karasek not only had a slim grasp of the English language, but he didn’t take much trouble to find out what the unfamiliar terms meant, even where his interpretation did not make much sense to him. His German style was a little rocky too.

The article linked above gives a full account in German. Some gems: interpreting you darn fool as if it had to do with darning; in ‘You can’t tell anything about an outfit like that’, with reference to a company, taking outfit to mean the furnishing of the room; an air-raid horn on a police car (the USA had just entered WWII when the novel appeared) is taken to be a large air-powered siren; ‘(the secretary) looked a little warmer, but no prairie fire’ comes across in German as ‘not like a prairie on fire’, which doesn’t work.

Thanks to Christiane

The Guardian reports that Max Mosley has won his case against the News of the World.

It also links to the full judgment as a PDF file. In particular, the judge found that there was no element of Nazism in the S & M role play. No. 51:

The facts that the jacket corresponded to the modern Luftwaffe uniform and that
German was spoken in the second of the two scenarios acted out on 28 March cannot
be identified with Nazism. As Woman B observed, and most Germans would agree,
it is inappropriate and offensive to equate everything German with the Nazi era. Mr
Thurlbeck’s answer, on more than one occasion, was that everything has to be seen
“in the round”. I take that to mean that notwithstanding the absence of specifically
Nazi or concentration camp indicia a reasonable person would still view the overall
exercise as Nazi role-play. He said that this was to be regarded merely as “am drams”
and the Claimant had been let down by his wardrobe department, with the result that
the clothes (whatever they actually were) should be regarded as “pretend” Nazi
uniforms. This is an approach that is not uncommon when witnesses in court are
trying to defend a certain position under cross-examination. If it is believed that a
particular state of affairs came about, it becomes necessary to explain away any
indicators to the contrary. Here, simply because it is assumed that there was Nazi
role-play, non-Nazi clothes have to be explained as “pretend” Nazi clothes.

and no. 53:

Mr Thurlbeck also relied upon the fact that the Claimant was “shaved”.
Concentration camp inmates were also shaved. Yet, as Mr Price pointed out, they had
their heads shaved. The Claimant, for reasons best known to himself, enjoyed having
his bottom shaved – apparently for its own sake rather than because of any supposed
Nazi connotation. He explained to me that while this service was being performed he
was (no doubt unwisely) “shaking with laughter”. I naturally could not check from
the DVD, as it was not his face that was on display.

On the German language (no. 59):

As to the use of the German language, Woman D gave evidence that she was turned
on by the thought of being interrogated, while she was in a submissive role, by people
using a foreign language which she did not understand. It added to the sense of
helplessness and having no control. She had originally heard the Claimant and
Woman B speaking German at a gathering towards the end of January or beginning of
February (simply because they had the language in common) and suggested to
Woman A that it would be a good idea to incorporate the further use of German in a
scenario later on.

The ABA Journal has canvassed the 25 best legal movies. Readers can vote too. One of the jury is Michael Asimow, who wrote Reel Justice (1996) – I see there’s a second edition and an interactive CD-ROM, which would be interesting.

Anyway, it’s inspired me to order a DVD of My Cousin Vinny.

(via Jurabilis)

Just like everyone else, some of what we learn is wrong. In Germany, young lawyers make motions in court that are unknown to German law because they saw them on American TV shows. A new law firm in Washington, D.C., conducted meetings every morning in which the lawyers reported on their cases. It was a total waste of time, but they got the idea from L.A. Law.

I wonder what the source for that is. But I have certainly noticed German TV series that show the German lawyer using the kind of court rhetoric usually associated with the common-law systems.

Five lawyers write on what they learned from films.

(Michael Asimow, How I Learned to Litigate at the Movies, ABA Journal)

Larko links to the website of Dr. Dragan Dabic, still online as I write:

Dr. Dragan “David” Dabic was born some six decades ago in a small Serbian village of Kovaci, near Kraljevo. As a young boy he liked to explore nearby forests and mountains, spending a lot of time on Kopaonik mountain where he tended to pick the omnipresent, natural and potent medicinal herbs that grew at those green pastures. As a young man he moved to Belgrade, and then on to Moscow where he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree (spec. in Psychiatry) at the Moscow State University (Lomonosov). After Russia, Dr. Dabic travelled around India and Japan, after which he settled in China where he specialized in alternative medicine, with a special emphasis on the mind-body control, meditation, Yoga, spiritual cleansing, as well as Chinese herbs. In mid-1990s Dr. Dabic returned back to mother Serbia for good, and ever since then emerged as one of the most prominent experts in the field of alternative medicine, bioenergy, and macrobiotic diet in the whole of the Balkans, and is frequent contributor to the regional alternative health magazines, and guest expert with numerous TV appearances and on many public forums, seminars and symposiums (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Pancevo, Sombor, Smederevo, Kikinda…) dedicated to these issues and topics.

Dr. Dragan Dabic currently resides on Yury Gagarin street in New Belgrade, but for public forum invitations, television appearances or private consultations he can be reached directly at the following contact:

healingwounds @ dragandabic . com

At least it isn’t machine translation. Why am I always so suspicious of alternative medicine? I like ‘he tended to pick the omnipresent…herbs’.

Another website is given in one of the links in the Law and Magic blog (of which more anon).

LATER NOTE: apparently the website is fake – at all events, it went online after 22 July 2008. See BILDblog. Actually, for a fake website it’s very nicely done, not too exaggerated.

This is only of interest to non-native speakers of German like me.

I encountered the word sächlich in a sense I had never met before. Sachlich usually means objective, and sächlich means neuter, as in masculine/feminine/neuter.

This was in section 32 (6) sentence 1 of the Einkommensteuergesetz (Income Tax Act):

Bei der Veranlagung zur Einkommensteuer wird für jedes zu berücksichtigende Kind des Steuerpflichtigen ein Freibetrag von 1.824 Euro für das sächliche Existenzminimum des Kindes (Kinderfreibetrag) sowie ein Freibetrag von 1.080 Euro für den Betreuungs- und Erziehungs- oder Ausbildungsbedarf des Kindes vom Einkommen abgezogen.

I realize that Existenzminimum (subsistence level) is neuter, but that’s obviously not what it means. I couldn’t find it in the multi-volume Duden dictionary (which tends to exclude specialist terminology). The Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch (which I had forgotten to add to my sidebar) hasn’t reached S yet. But I do have a link to the Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS), and there it was:

sächlich /Adj./
1. Gramm. ein s. Substantiv, ein Substantiv mit s. Geschlecht (ein mit dem Artikel ‘das’ verbundenes Substantiv); der s. Artikel (der Artikel ‘das’); dieses Nomen ist s., wird s. gebraucht
2. fachspr. einen materiellen Gegenstand betreffend: die personellen und s. Verwaltungskosten; die s. Voraussetzungen des naturwissenschaftlichen Schulunterrichts sind verbessert worden; Die Kosten der sächlichen Unterhaltung [der Arbeitsbibliotheken] und der personellen Kräfte tragen die Räte der Kreise Gesetzblatt DDR 1956
dazu haupt-, neben-, tat-, ursächlich

Fantastic! I went with ‘material’.