The six members of Zoe’s Ark convicted in Chad and returned to France to serve their sentences cause legal problems since they presumably can’t do forced labour in France.

They also cause language problems, since the term transfèrement (according to Bridge’s FR – EN law dictionary transfer of prisoners) seems unfamiliar to some journalists. Hence detailed discussions of the terms in Langue sauce piquante and Les zakouski du jeudi.

The subject is discussed by Arthur Goldhammer, who also mentions German:

In German “transference” is die Überträgung, which is indeed “transfer” in the ordinary sense, so maybe this is another of those instances where Strachey betrayed Freud by overrefining his language. This discussion may be of more interest to students of translation than of politics, and of course “translation” (Übersetzung, traduction) is but another sense of “transfer.”

Actually, the OED doesn’t mention Strachey in this connection. It gives two or three meanings of transference, one quite early. The Freudian one originates in 1911 (after a use of transfer in 1910).

1911 Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. XXII. 434 The reason why the physician is so often the object toward which the transference is made is that the Œdipus complex is almost invariably present in the patient. 1916 C. E. Long tr. Jung’s Analyt. Psychol. 245 What has disgusted you in hypnotism is at bottom nothing but the so-called ‘transference’ to the doctor. 1920 E. Jones Treatm. Neuroses 40 He is+reacting not toward the physician, but rather toward the other person who has been brought together (‘identified’) with the latter in his mind, an occurrence technically known as ‘transference’.

It appears that Strachey followed an earlier translation.

One meaning of transference is legal too:

Sc. Law. The procedure by which a depending action is transferred from a person deceased to his representative.

Thanks to Trevor

Germans wish each other ‘einen guten Rutsch’, literally, in modern German, ‘a good slide’ into the New Year.

Now I keep reading that this is related to Jewish ‘Rosch Haschana’ (head or beginning of the year). After reading this several times, perhaps just taken from the dpa text and copied, I had the feeling I was being deceived. Bremer Sprachblog supports my doubts, suspecting, without being certain, that ‘Rutsch’ here means a journey.

… auf der semantischen Seite sieht es schlecht aus. Wie sollte das hebräische Wort für „Kopf“ in einen deutschen Neujahrsgruß kommen? Das ginge nur, wenn es einen hebräischen Neujahrsgruß gäbe, in dem dieses Wort vorkäme: dieser Gruß könnte als Ganzes entlehnt und danach durch Volksetymologie neu analysiert worden sein. Und hier bricht die Hypothese zusammen: wenn man der Wikipedia glauben darf (und das darf man im Allgemeinen), dann gibt

“es weder im Hebräischen noch im Jiddischen eine Grußformel […], die dieses „Rosch“ beinhaltet (etwa „Guten Rosch ha-Schana“ o.ä.); die gängige Formel lautet: „Schana tova“ (=Hebr.) oder „a gut yor“ (=Jidd.).” [de.wikipedia.org]

Lautliche und semantische Ähnlichkeiten zwischen Wörtern unterschiedlicher Sprachen kann man beliebig viele finden, aber solange man den konkreten Entlehnungsprozess nicht nachweisen kann, gibt es auch keinen Grund, von einer Entlehnung auszugehen.

I write this although Mark Liberman at Language Log once said it was his New Year’s resolution to take a positive attitude towards treatments of linguistic matters in the popular press. That was in July 2006. I wonder how well he has kept it.

While I’m on the subject of popular beliefs about language, a word about stainless. On British shopping TV, I heard it said that stainless steel isn’t stain-free, it just stains less. That was said to be the etymology of the word. I gather from Google that stainless steel indeed isn’t completely stainproof, but I can’t accept that that’s the derivation, from less as opposed to more. Here at least the OED seems to agree (but Wikipedia doesn’t).

The OE. léas, like its equivalents in the other Teut. langs. (see lease a., loose a.), was used in the sense ‘devoid (of)’, ‘free (from)’, both as a separate adj., governing the genitive, as in firena léas free from crimes, and (more frequently) as the second element of compounds, the first element being a n., as in fácnléas guileless, wífléas without a wife. The adj., as a separate word in the relevant sense, did not survive in ME., and the ending -léas became a mere suffix, which was, and still is, very freely attached to ns. to form adjs. with privative sense.

Here’s a random example from the Web:

Lastly, contrary to popular belief, stainless steel is NOT stain-proof, but is stain-LESS, as it is spelled.

This book, in a German version naming no translator, was one of my Christmas presents this year:

Jeffrey Metzner: Stick. Great moments in Art, History, Film and More… (related website)
Jeffrey Metzner: Strich für Strich. Große Momente der Film-, Kunst- und Weltgeschichte
amazon.de: Strich für Strich

Some of the pictures are easy to guess, and some aren’t.

This ad is widely displayed on the tube in London. Something we can all wish for.

For more details, see www.stopwormsdead.co.uk.

Ich zitiere Bettina in Linklogbuch):

Die Generaldirektion Übersetzung der Europäischen Kommission hat den Acquis Communitaire (Rechtsvorschriften, Verträge und Urteile des Europäischen Gerichtshofs) in 22 Sprachen in einem Format zum Download bereitgestellt, aus dem problemlos ein Translation Memory in einer beliebigen Sprachenkombination erstellt werden kann.

I completely missed this, whenever it happened. The acquis communautaire (more or less) has now been made available by the Directorate-General for Translation in 22 languages in a form that can easily be converted into a translation memory (assuming one has enough RAM and disc space to use it). That will be a highly useful thing to have, although at the same time, I suspect, very diverse in the suggestions it makes.

There is a tool to extract the language pair you’re interested in.

There is not only the DGT TM collection, but also a corpus for linguistics research called JRC-Acquis. Read more at:

Information in English

As of November 2007, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Translation (DGT) made publicly accessible its multilingual Translation Memory for the Acquis Communautaire – a collection of parallel texts (texts and their translation, also referred to as bi-texts) in 22 languages. On this page, you will find a summary of this unique resource and instructions on where to download it and how to produce bilingual aligned corpora for any of the 231 language pair combinations (462 language pair directions).