Auf Deutsch: Übersetzer-Blog von Dirk Nolte. Ein Hauptthema ist: wie machen Übersetzer im Internet auf ihr Angebot aufmerksam?

Stefan Niggemaier is famous in Germany as the founder of BILDblog, which follows up the extravagant reports in Bild and gives the real lowdown (now with assistance from co-bloggers). He’s not only a blogger, but also an experienced graduate journalist.

In his other blog, which I didn’t know, under the heading Chronologie einer Falschmeldung (Chronology of a false report), Niggemeier reports (thanks to Matthias for the tip-off) how the news agency dpa issued a false report about a speech in English in Rostock and falsely corrected it.

Here’s the original problem: at the demonstration in Rostock on Saturday June 2, Walden Bello, a sociology professor and opponent of globalization from the Philippines, said, referring to the war in Iraq:

Two years ago they said: Do not bring the war into the discussions. Just focus on poverty reduction. Well, we say: We have to bring the war right into this meeting. Because without peace there can be no justice.

This was correctly translated into German by an interpreter (I assume that’s what Niggemeier means by Übersetzer):

Vor zwei Jahren hat es geheißen: Wir sollen den Krieg nicht in die Diskussion mit reinbringen. Wir sollen uns nur auf Armutsbekämpfung konzentrieren. Aber ich sage: Wir müssen den Krieg hier mit reinbringen. Denn ohne Frieden kann es auch keine Armutsbekämpfung geben.

About half an hour later, these words could be heard on MyVideo.

At 18.41 on Saturday, dpa reported this as follows:

Um 17.30 Uhr werden die ersten Autos angezündet, während unweit vom Tatort auf der Kundgebungsbühne ein Redner die militante Szene noch mit klaren Worten aufstachelt: “Wir müssen den Krieg in diese Demonstration reintragen. Mit friedlichen Mitteln erreichen wir nichts.”

(a speaker from the militant scene stirred up [the crowd] in plain words: “We must bring the war into this demonstration. We will get nowhere with peaceful means.”)

The dpa text was published promptly by Bild and by Spiegel Online. Not long afterwards, Der Spiegelfechter, the blog that does for Der Spiegel what BILDblog does for Bild, gave a correction.

dpa reported that there had been a translation mistake, but it wrongly stated that this consisted in not linking the words ‘We will get nowhere with peaceful means’ to the Iraq war rather than the Rostock demonstration. In fact the words were never said, and it was not until Tuesday afternoon that dpa published a proper correction and apology.

To summarize the couple of days between Saturday and Tuesday: the false report was quoted, sometimes with embellishment, by sources including B.Z, various Swiss newspapers, the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the Westdeusche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Kölnische Rundschau.

This is the second time I’ve read this kind of thing in the TLS in recent weeks. This time it’ll be online for a few days more, in a review of Ted Hughes, Selected Translations, edited by Daniel Weissbort:

Daniel Weissbort, who edited this selection, tells the story of Hughes taking another poet’s translation of a work by the Hungarian Ferenc Juhasz and, without any knowledge of the original language and no Hungarian speaker to advise him, turning that version into a thrilling poem that drives the existing versions off the map. It is as if there were, as the race has often dreamed, an ur-language, some fundamental human speech predating the Tower of Babel, to which true poets have visionary access.

I must remember to work on this. Just imagine: you need no dictionaries, no trips abroad to brush up the language.

(The reviewer, Clive Wilmer, does very much qualify this statement in the rest of the review, to be fair)

Someone just phoned to ask if I’m Metellus Scipio. I am not. Wikipedia says:

Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica – also known as Metellus Scipio, consul 52 BC, adopted son of Metellus Pius, with whom he campaigned against Sertorius. He became father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. He commanded the “Republican” army at Thapsus, and was killed in battle against Gaius Julius Caesar’s legions.

The new Metellus Scipio has published three book reviews on amazon.de. They all award between one and two gold stars out of five. So much for my reputation as a bearer of sweetness and light.

Metellus Scipio reviews

I must admit to some partial agreement with MS. On Fisher’s The German Legal System and Legal Language:

The writing is only relatively mediocre (unlike “German Legal System and Laws” from Oxford University Press, which is full of horrid Denglish). If you already know what he’s trying to say, you understand what he means. But if you already know how the German legal system is set up, why would you read this book?

I might have slipped such a comment in brackets in myself! I must say I possess Fisher, in one edition (it keeps being expanded and there’s a new edition), but I haven’t studied it in depth. I tend to disagree with some of its suggestions, but I don’t know it well enough to review it.

Zahn is great, but the criticism here is of the electronic version and in particular the software. Similarly with Herbst, which I find never contains what I want either, although I’m usually looking for Swiss or Austrian terms, and I would not make do with Schäfer either, unlike the reviewer – my Schäfer and Herbst are in a pretty pristine condition, for obvious reasons.

This van stands next door all day on Tuesdays. Not that I shall be giving it any custom tomorrow – I am making baked beans.

The Juristisches Internetprojekt Saarbrücken has a link of the week, and a year or two ago I used to look at these regularly. Now I have been back after a gap, and I have three useful links to pass on:

Portal des Fürstentums Liechtenstein – a Liechtenstein portal

Juriblogs – Le répertoire des blogs juridiques: a large annotated collection of French blog links – click on the second tab for a list

European Forum of Official Gazettes – click on the tab

Their latest link is to blawgs.

I also found another translation weblog, transubstantiation – can’t remember where.