Der unermüdliche Per Döhler hat ein paar Seiten für Übersetzer zur Umsatzsteuererhöhung 2007 geschrieben.

Da weder das Finanzamt noch Steuerberater sich immer in diesem Zusammenhang auskennen, sollte man sich das anschauen, und auch noch Pers Einführung in die Mehrwertsteuer.

Anlass der Arbeit war diesmal, dass der ADÜ-Nord schon Seminare für 2007 anbieten will und sich fragte, wie hoch die MwSt sein sollte. Da die Seminare erst 2007 stattfinden, kann man schon bei Zahlung 2006 19% absetzen.

Die ‘petite anglaise’, Fremdsprachenkorrespondentin bei einer englischen Wirtschaftsprüferfirma in Paris und heimliche aber vielgelesene Bloggerin, hat ihre Stelle verloren – wie in englischen Zeitschriften und ihrem Blog jetzt berichtet.

Catherine of ‘petite anglaise’ has lost her day job (weblog) at Dixon Wilson, a British accountancy firm in Paris. I’m a bit late on reporting this, and the Telegraph site seems to be down (a couple of days ago they reported it in their news as an exclusive, where I saw it at the time, and in their weblog too) so I refer to Fistful of Euros for the other links – including one to a Channel 4 interview.

She will be taking the firm to court for unfair dismissal.

The weblog Journal d’un avocat has also examined the affair (French). It appears that the employer’s letter gives fewer concrete details than Callboy Torsten:

bq. Ce n’est pas bien, c’est indiscutable. Ce qui l’est tout autant, c’est qu’aucun extrait de ces textes “inacceptables” et “dénigrants” n’est cité à titre de démonstration. L’employeur se contente d’affirmer, et substitue son appréciation aux faits objectifs. Devant le Conseil, ils ont intérêts à produire les passages incriminés, s’ils existent, car les juges ne se contenteront pas de l’appréciation de l’employeur et voudront examiner eux même ces fameux passages.

The weblog has been compared to Bridget Jones, but it isn’t all in that style. I remember an account, in several stages, of Catherine’s experience as an adopted child. And there are very few references to her job in the blog anyway.

Sind die Deutschen wegen der Umlaute in ihrer Sprache depressiv?

The BBC once claimed an American psychology professor had proved Germans are depressive because of umlauts.

Mark Liberman has done a great job of writing this story up at Language Log (here, and here for Professor David Myers’ reply (beginning in true transatlantic fashion ‘Hoo boy, Mark’).

Languagehat has also taken the story up, and there are comments.

Some seem to think the Turks should be even more depressive, but then they should be bipolar, since by the rules of vowel harmony a sequence of words will either have lots of umlauts or none.

Mark shows that there is a (very remote) basis for this story in psychological experiments on the relation of sounds and mood.

On the subject of confusing word pairs (drucken / drücken, schwul / schwül), I am afraid I have myself committed the solecism of saying, ‘Ich habe die Katze gefuttert’ (‘I ate the cat’).

The results of the RollOnFriday competition mentioned a few days ago are in.

bq. Nabarro Nathanson: “What are your main interests and activities, and how have they changed over the last ten years”.
19 year old applicant: “I don’t climb as many trees as I used to, and Action Man doesn’t hold the same appeal”.

Apparently some firms ask what animal / biscuit / fruit / car your friends see you as.

bq. Biscuits: “A garibaldi. I panicked. I don’t even like garibaldis”

I think Garibaldi is a good answer. One doesn’t eat them often enough. See A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down

bq. A complete one off, the Garibaldi biscuit is unlike any other, and as such commands a unique position in the biscuit world.
Where do I begin, its got more currents [sic] in it than even a fruit shortcake. They come in big slabs with little marks where you are supposed to break them up. …
Affectionately known as dead fly [sic; should be ‘squashed fly’, MM] biscuits, yet again the sheer fact they have a nick name marks them out from their other biscuit brethren.

Even the first sentence of this indicates it’s not a style guide.

In England, unlike in Germany and the USA, private prosecutions are permitted. The Independent reports on the dismissal of charges in connection with the death of Michael Matthews shortly after he became the youngest person to climb Everest (at least at that time).

Private Strafverfolgungen sind im englischen Recht möglich. In den letzten Jahren hört man eher von Zivilverfahren, die Erfolg haben können (nicht nur bei O.J.Simpson – in den USA gibt es aber keine private Strafverfolgung, soviel ich weiß).

bq. But the judge in the case yesterday ordered the charges against the men to be dropped after a strongly-worded ruling that they had been brought to court with insufficient evidence.
Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC said that while it was clear there had been problems with the oxygen equipment, these had not contributed to Mr Matthews’s death.
The judge said: “If ever a criminal charge should be emphatically dismissed, this is it … The prosecution case was based upon pure and wholly impermissible speculation.”

Note the vocabulary: ein Verfahren einstellen – in criminal law, to drop charges, to dismiss a charge, drop a case. In civil law it would be to suspend / stay / discontinue proceedings.

This did reach the Crown Court, so it wasn’t stopped at the committal proceedings stage.

The Independent also reports on the long hot summer of 1911 (the record for hot weather in 1911 has only just been broken).

bq. On 6 September Thomas W Burgess, aged 37, covered in lard and stark naked except for a pair of thick motorist’s goggles and a black rubber bathing cap, stepped into the sea at Folkestone to make his 16th attempt to reach France by swimming across the Channel. …
Averaging a mile and three-quarters an hour and accompanied by a boat whose crew fed him a grape from time to time and 11 drops of champagne every 30 minutes, Burgess followed the irregular course dictated by the tide, a route he described as “a figure of a badly written capital M with a loop on first down stroke”.

I wouldn’t mind the grape and the champagne, but without the lard and the swimming.

There is an article about the patent translator Hidejiro Tanigawa in Daily Yomiuri Online.

It’s a description of his career and his opinions about patent translation. It’s a good summary for those who are ignorant of technical translation.

bq. “Translation of patent applications–whether it’s from English to Japanese or the other way around–requires three basic skills: language, knowledge of technology, and knowledge of the patent system,” he said.
Of the three, he thinks the most important is the language. However, the remaining two are also essential, as one can hardly expect to do a good job without them.
“Suppose you are translating a patent application for a product related to bioscience. If you don’t understand anything about bioscience, you can’t even consult a dictionary, as you wouldn’t understand what the dictionary told you. A basic knowledge of the field is necessary just to be able to look up things in a dictionary,” he said.

And here’s the former Flefoid Steve Vitek on the same topic in Translation Journal.