legaltv.co.uk is a TV channel which has apparently been online (and on Sky) since February. It calls itself ‘The law firm in your living room’.

Via RollOnFriday:

bq. A spokeswoman told us that the channel launched back in February, although no one noticed, and it is targeting students, qualified lawyers and, err, really just the public generally. Rather alarmingly, it aims to be a “law firm in your living room” and viewers will be able to enjoy such varied programmes as “Cook with Counsel – bringing the courtroom to your kitchen” and “M.D.A. – where lawyers operate on doctors”.

It sounds as if Pakistan were treated badly. The linguistic point is how this will be described, if at all, in the German-language press.

The page Curiosities of biological nomenclature has some odd examples:

bq. Piseinotecus divae Er. Marcus, 1955 (gastropod) “Piseinotecus” means “I stepped on Teco.” Teco was a dog belonging to a diva (or to Prof. Diva Corrêa). One of the Marcuses (Evelyne or Ernst) stepped on the dog on the way to the kitchen in the middle of the night.

bq. Bufonaria borisbeckeri Parth, 1996 (bursid sea snail) Etymology: “Ich widme die neue Art Boris Becker, dem meines Erachtens größten deutschen Einzelsportler aller Zeiten.” [Spixiana 19(1): 129]

bq. Strigiphilus garylarsoni Clayton, ~1989 (owl louse) “I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along.” – Gary Larson

But when I read this Independent headline, I thought people had been crushing Volkswagen cars: Fans ‘exterminate’ Hitler beetle

bq. Some biologists have suggested that Sheibel’s naming of a blind beetle after the Führer was, in fact, an attempt to ridicule him. Such antics aren’t unimaginable. Last year, three newly-discovered types of slime mold beetle were named after members of the current US administration: A bushi, A cheneyi and A rumsfeldi. All done with the greatest of respect, of course, claim the scientists at Cornell University, who named them.

Yes, but have people been rushing to collect these three?

More information at Wikipedia (English)

Artikel auf Deutsch

If I’d got any closer to this I would probably have fallen into the Pegnitz (on its way to join the Rednitz and form the Regnitz). And then there wouldn’t have been a picture!

SPÄTER HINZUGEFÜGT: Anscheinend geht es bei Google nur um private Startseiten, die man auf dem eigenen Rechner hat.

LATER NOTE: Apparently Google provides feeds only for private pages on a person’s own computer, start pages in the browser (see comments). I still need to look into it, though.

Schon vorgestern fand ich mein Weblog, ohne Ads, auf einer IT-Website in Nordirland. Heute finde ich dies.

Is Google offering my copyrighted contents further?

People can quote an entry of mine or a photo if they acknowledge my name. The usual way is to link. I don’t want people to take a whole entry or put a picture on their site normally. But to take the whole RSS feed? Without asking or reading the copyright notice?

Walisische Radfahrer, die vom Rad vor einer Baustelle absteigen sollen, werden stattdessen informiert, dass eine Blasenkrankheit zurückgekehrt ist (icWales.co.uk):

The temporary sign, placed in front of the roadworks at Barons Court roundabout between Penarth and Cardiff, correctly says ‘cyclists dismount’ in English, but says ‘llid y bledren dymchwelyd’ in Welsh.
Owain Sgiv, an officer for the Welsh language campaign group Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, explained: ‘Roughly translated, llid y bledren dymchwelyd means bladder disease has returned.

Apparently road signs are often mistranslated, because people use online translators. Does that mean there is an online Welsh translation program somewhere?

Cyclists dismount is an awkward sentence to translate as there is no Welsh word for dismount,’ he added.

‘But the correct translation would be something like dim beicio, which means literally no cycling, or man disgyn i feicwyr, which means fall-off area for cyclists.

There are a lot of bolshie cyclists in Germany who would love a language with no word for ‘dismount’. I wonder what Morfablog would make of this – I wish I could understand what they are saying.

A bit of googling (wash my mouth out with soap and water) shows that there is a flickr pool of pictures of bad translations into Welsh, according to a Live Journal diary:

So there’s a flickr pool called Scymraeg, for bad translations into Welsh. And most of what’s in there are roadsigns. BBC News today has a story about one such sign today, which tells English speakers to look right and Welsh speakers to look left.

Sounds like a plan to exterminate the Welsh. Unfortunately most of the pictures aren’t explained in English, but I suppose that’s understandable.

(Thanks to Joe)