The Arcadi Espada blog reports that after the Wall fell, there were queues of East Germans at many West German libraries to return the books they’d borrowed before 1961:

Todo son historias. Berlín es las mil y una noches –noche y noche— de este lado del tiempo y del mundo. Una de alemanes, de muro y de libros que me cuenta Cristina en el camino de Treptow. El cierre total de la frontera pilló a muchos berlineses desprevenidos. Y entre los asuntos pendientes estaban los libros prestados por bibliotecas del Oeste que estaban en poder de ciudadanos del Este. Ya no podían devolverlos. Pero los guardaron con sus papelitos. Pocos días después de caído el Muro había colas en muchas bibliotecas, y las formaban alemanes pacientes y fieles a sí mismos.

This is reminiscent of what Lenin said about Germans, revolutions and train tickets.

(Via Trevor and the El Blog del Futuro del Libro)

The Financial Times Deutschland has an article about the frequent use of disclaimers, above all in email, and their ineffectiveness (as they are one-sided).

Manchmal ist es eine Einladung zum Mittagessen. Ein anderes Mal poppt die Nachricht auf, dass sich das Meeting verschiebt. Harmlose Mitteilungen per E-Mail, zunächst. Bis der Blick des Lesers auf das Ende der elektronischen Mitteilung fällt: “Diese Information ist vertraulich. Falls Sie diese E-Mail irrtümlich erhalten haben, informieren Sie bitte unverzüglich den Absender, und vernichten Sie diese E-Mail. Das Kopieren und Weiterleiten ist verboten.”

Thanks for the link to Per Döhler, who also reminded me of the site www.angstklauseln.de, which I noted from a German legal weblog recently but lost. It’s a collection of such paragraphs.

The contents of this mail are freely re-distributable under the GPL. Any files that are transmitted with it must be hitchhikers that have been picked up while the mail was speeding along the information highway. As this mail is neither digitally encrypted nor signed, it can’t be considered confidential and/or intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed to. Any attachments that may have hopped on along the way are to be regarded as useless jetsam made from recycled electrons and must be deleted straight away. The views stated in this flutter definitely do not represent the view of any company on this planet that the author knows of. We are sorry to have bothered you if you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail. You may, however, copy, forward, disclose or otherwise use this mail or any part of it in any form whatsoever, provided that you really feel like it, but you can also just hit the delete-key and get it over with. If you have received this mail in error please do not trouble yourself to inform the sender about it as that’s obviously his/her own fault.

For a different view, see www.emaildisclaimers.com.

bq. What the experts say:
‘If you are in any doubt as to whether or not you should include a notice, then you should include one’.
Email@work 2000, Jonathan Whelan

Here are some stupid disclaimers and good links, and here is the longest disclaimer.

(Originally via Carsten Hoenig and JuraWiki)

There are a number of periodicals for translators that can be found online, sometimes all issues (ADÜ-Nord Infoblatt), sometimes just older issues (Hieronymus – click on Archiv), multilingual, of the Swiss association ASTTI; ATICOM’s FORUM; TransRelations, by the BDÜ Landesverband Bremen und Niedersachsen; the Austrian association Universitas also makes the BDÜ Hessen-Info available – I didn’t find it on the BDÜ website – and a copy of the NZSTI journal Word for Word in New Zealand, with an article on interpreting in war zones – and Universitas’ own Mitteilungsblatt).

The German Language Division (GLD) of the American Translators Association (ATA) has a newsletter and I happened to look at the December 2006 issue and found an article by Inge Noeninger in Canada, originally from Frankfurt am Main, on legal translation: Juristische Übersetzungen … trocken? – Von wegen! A nice collection of references for translating and learning law.

There’s also a review of the Langenscheidt ALPMANN Fachwörterbuch Kompakt Recht (also in German).

I just traced the translator ethics article to its original source at the New York Times, where it costs something to access. While at that site, I found another ethics question about an interpreter:

Some time ago I was working as a court interpreter, translating what is said in court for the defendant and what the defendant says for the court. During a recess, the defendant confided that he did commit the crime and intended to take the stand and lie about it. I sought the advice of a colleague, who then informed the judge. As a result, I was chastised and lost my job. Was I wrong to divulge this information? E.N., Seattle

Of course, this kind of question is more commonly discussed when you’re learning to interpret than the diary question is when you’re learning to translate. That’s partly because defendants may have a completely wrong idea of the interpreter’s role and not realize it is impartial.

Gabriele Zöttl’s website with a German translation weblog. Background in literature, translation experience mainly IT. I know her name from mailing lists, but had no idea about this weblog. I hope it continues. Part of a very well-designed website.

The Salt Lake Tribune’s Everyday Ethics section asks: Was dad right to translate diary?

My father, a translator, was hired by a man who suspected that his wife was unfaithful and married him only to get a green card. He had my father translate photocopied pages from her diary. Family members think this was unethical. My father maintains he simply did his job. You? (Incidentally, the diary confirmed the devastated man’s suspicions, and he is initiating divorce proceedings.)

The answer given is that the translator should have declined the job on moral grounds, instead of violating the privacy of the diarist. This is seen as parallel to the rule in the code of ethics of the American Translators Association that a translator should ‘refuse any assignment he believes to be intended for illegal or dishonest purposes, or against the public interest’ – this isn’t quite the same thing – translation may be legal, but not ethical.

One thing that strikes me is that the translator shouldn’t have been discussing his work with his family anyway.