It seems a good idea to pay for one’s underground ticket, but the consequences of not paying are worse than I imagined – a criminal record and no future.
Meanwhile at Nymphenburg (click to enlarge):
And then again:
On marrying a foreigner in Kazhakstan:
For some reason, my relatives decided that Im getting married to a millionaire and asked him to pay kalym (traditional payment for a bride) with a helicopter, for grandpa, since he is old and a veteran of World War II and apparently its hard for him to take a bus. For you, it may be funny, but it wasnt funny for my relatives, and especially for my grandpa who really hoped to sell his granddaughter for a helicopter. And then I understood that I have to save my future husband from the claws of my relatives, or else something bad might happen. When my grandpa found out that he wont get a helicopter, and that a maximum on what my relatives can count on is a bicycle, they were really upset, and didnt even try to hide it.
Translation is not always necessary:
When Kazakhs and foreigners get really drunk, they can understand each other without a translator.
Leila via Global Voices
It’s terrible the stereotypical image of Bavaria that is presented abroad – almost identical to the real thing.
I’ve mentioned Kenneth Adams on contract drafting twice before.
He will be giving a one-day seminar on legal language in Frankfurt am Main on April 26, and before that on April 17 in London and April 19 in Paris. More information on seminars here and here. I see he gives a ‘rigorous overview’, so everyone should be happy. The seminars are primarily for lawyers and take both U.S. and British usage into account.
I sometimes wonder why they don’t go the whole way.
LATER NOTE: I want to be the only person with the new word bamboogrün online, so here it is in text too. I have a feeling that the German bambusgrün is sometimes used for colours, but the English bamboo green isn’t.
(Seen at the local post office)
This report on the n-tv site is headed Tragischer Übersetzungsfehler (tragic translation error).
Fehlinterpretationen einer englischen Bedienungsanleitung haben mindestens drei Krebspatienten in einem ostfranzösischen Krankenhaus das Leben gekostet. Durch den falschen Gebrauch einer Software sei es im Krankenhaus von Epinal in Lothringen in 23 Fällen zu Überdosierungen der Röntgenstrahlen gekommen, teilte Antoine Perrin vom Regionalinstitut für Krankenhausplanung ARH am Dienstag in Nancy mit. Vier Patienten seien seitdem gestorben, davon drei an den Folgen der Überdosierungen.
It looks as if there was no French version of an English manual for an X-Ray machine or procedure in Lorraine, and the staff made an error ‘by the misuse of software’ – presumably this was the software that controlled the dosage. As a result 23 patients were given too much radiation and three have died.
Exactly where the ‘translation error’ took place is not clear. Equipment produced in the EU has by law to be supplied with foreign-language instructions nowadays. Whether this was old equipment, or software or equipment outside the regulations, and who did what translation or interpreting is not clear (sometimes known as ‘tragic journalism error’). The rest of the article says the problem arose solely from a mistaken interpretation of the data, and those responsible are to be punished. Who those responsible are is not clear – probably radiologists – and if they can be punished, what criminal offence was involved? The radiation took place between May 2004 and August 2005.
Does anyone have more information about this? It must have been in the French press. The names involved are an Antoine Perrin, who announced this to the press in Nancy on Tuesday, and the French health minister Xavier Bertrand.
LATER NOTE: I found some French reports by searching for epinal hopital on Google. I haven’t yet found a mention of the English language. It seems to have been a software problem, and one of the radiologists disabled the controls on the device. Le Figaro, 2006
(Link found on the TT translation list at Yahoogroups)
EVEN LATER NOTE: Richard Schneider has investigated this in more detail and summarizes it (in German) at the Übersetzerportal. It appears some of the persons reporting the story didn’t understand French very well. The lack of an English translation of the manual was a subsidiary matter, and even if there had been a good translation, the overradiation would still have occurred – it resulted from a lack of proper procedures among the staff involved.