This morning:
Last Wednesday:
Working Languages points out that Lufthansa haven’t heard of the term ‘World Cup’.
bq. But what is this World Championship of which they speak? Is it in any way connected to the World Cup currently dominating our lives? Could it perhaps be some parallel or even rival event?
Waldschänke Nürnberg (deutsche Speisekarte)
(Thanks to Jutta – I didn’t ask her what she ate)
Cordially welcomely in the Waldschaenke sport bar
Frankish courts
Pig roast with Kloss and salad 6,30
Schaeuferle roasted with Kloss and salad 7,90
Sour roast with Kloss or Spaetzle in addition salad 7,80
Rinderroulade with Kloss and salad 7,80
3 Frankish bratwuerste with herb or potato salad 4,90
From the pan
Shred Viennese kind with Pommes or potato salad in addition salad 7,10
Hunter shred with Pommes in addition salad 7,30
Gypsy shred with Pommes and salad 7,30
Shred “Waldschaenke special” with garlic sauce, Kroketten and salad
7,30
Cordon Bleu with Pommes or potato salad in addition salad 7,70
Putengeschnetzeltes with Spaetzle or Roesti in addition mixed salad 7,20
Schweinelendchen in with duchess potatoes and salad 7,80
Putenmedaillons with herb butter, Pommes and salad 7,20
Ham noodles with scrambled egg in addition salad 6,20
Roestkloss with ham and scrambled egg in addition salad 5,90
Fish courts
Calamaris with Remouladensosse and salad 6,80
Fischfilet baked with Remoulade and potato salad 6,10
Vegetarian courts
Kaesespaetzle with roasting bulb and salad 6,20
Sheep cheese baked with salad, olives and Peperoni 5,20
Fresh cheese potato bags with salad 5,40
Mozarellasticks on multicolored salad 5,40
Excavator specialities
With apple mash or preiselbeeren 4,30
With Camenbert in addition preiselbeeren 5,90 over-bake
Vegetable excavator with mixed salad 6,20
With smoking salmon in addition Preiselbeermerrettich 6,80
With Schweinelendchen and pepper cream sauce in addition salad 7,90
Excavator on back steak with cheese over-bake in addition salad 6,90
Salads
PUT chest strip on multicolored salatteller with weissbrot 7,20 Salad
plate with gek. Ham, cheese, olives and Peperoni 5,90
Greek farmer salad with Baquette 6,50
Noodle courts
Tagliatelle on tomato sauce with Parmesan and Basilikum 5,90
Tagliatelle with smoking salmon strips in cream sauce 6,50
Spiral noodles with China vegetable sweetly sourly from the pan 6,30
Spiral noodles with PUT chest strips and China vegetables in pikanter
sauce 7,20
Tortelini with meat filling in the seeing Niger cream sauce 5,90
Refeed
3 Apfelkuechle with vanilla ice-cream and cream 3,80
And raspberries 3,30
are called vanilla ice-cream with cream? Gem.Eis Schoko, vanilla,
strawberry with cream 2,90
Small courts
Cattle beef-tea with pancake strip 2,30
Chili con Carne in addition weissbrot 4, 60?
Curry sausage with Pommes 4,60
Schaschlik with Pommes 5,40
Chicken Wings with Pommes and pikanter Sauce 5,50
Shred-and-yielded with salad supplement 4,90
Ham cheese Baquette over-bakes 4,50
Baked Camenbert in addition preiselbeeren and weissbrot 3, 90
Ham or chese sandwich with cucumber and tomato 2,30
Knoblauchbaquette 3,00
City sausage with music in addition brown bread 4, 60
Kaept’n blue bear plate 5 Fischstaebchen with Pommes or potato salad
3,50
Child shred with Pommes and Ketchup 5,00
Some lawyers on the letterheads of American law firms, and increasingly of English ones too, are described as being ‘of counsel’.
On a letterhead it usually means a senior lawyer who is semi-retired. (In England, that used to be consultant)
But I gather it’s beginning to refer to younger lawyers who have been around a while but are not going to be made partners.
Off a letterhead, it can mean a lawyer from another firm who helps a lawyer in a case.
In the Times Law Weblog, Edward Fennell commented on Herbert Smith introducing this.
bq. So the firms decision, announced this week, that it is setting up a new “career path” for associates seems entirely in keeping with this philosophy. Those selected will be given extra status, a possible bonus and additional perks. Cant be bad. …
But they [big law firms] also need able people who while not necessarily “ticking all the boxes” for partnership – still have a terrific amount to offer in turning the wheels of profitability.
My gripe, were I amongst them, is the adoption of the grating Americanism “Of Counsel”. Come on, were British – the English language can do better than this.
I don’t know if ‘grating Americanism’ is the problem, but it is a difficult expression to handle as a noun. To quote Herbert Smith:
bq. Norman Green, Chief Operating Officer at Herbert Smith, commented:
“We believe there is a clear business need for an alternative career structure, a belief supported by the soundings we took among associates. We look forward to announcing the first group of Of Counsel in September.
I do like Herbert Smith’s current opening page.
Here’s something on the subject in the USA: The Of Counsel Relationship, by Nancy Kaufmann.
If you missed out on holy effigies on your toast, technology can help.
(Via gizmodo – at least, that was the finger drums)
In his entry Kein Dienstvertrag mit Microsoft, Ingmar recently commented on the translation into German of a Microsoft licence agreement.
Microsoft original English
Microsoft German translation
bq. CONTRACT FOR SERVICE.
This is a contract between you and Microsoft for use of the Microsoft .NET Messenger Service. We are Microsoft Corporation (located at One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399) or, based on where you live, a Microsoft affiliate. We will refer to ourselves in this contract as either “Microsoft”, “we” or “our.” You are an individual person.
bq. DIENSTVERTRAG
Dies ist ein Vertrag zwischen Ihnen und Microsoft hinsichtlich der Nutzung des Microsoft .NET Messenger Services. Wir sind die Microsoft Corporation (Adresse: One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399, USA) oder, je nachdem, wo Sie wohnen, ein verbundenes Unternehmen von Microsoft. Wir bezeichnen uns in diesem Vertrag entweder als “Microsoft”, “wir” oder uns. Sie sind eine Einzelperson.
Now obviously Ingmar was aware he didn’t have an employment contract with Microsoft. For one thing, he wasn’t getting any salary, and on top of that they seemed to be excluding so many things that they didn’t sound like an ideal employer.
However, their translator isn’t alone in his difficulties. Here’s a brief and not very academic summary of the problems:
In English law there is a distinction between a contract of service and a contract for services. This is pretty confusing in itself, and there’s an argument for just not using the terms at all. But since they exist, here’s the lowdown:
Contract of service: a contract of employment. The employee may be employed, say, for 40 hours a week, and the employer can to a large extent decide where the employee works and at what times. Employment law used to be called master and servant law. You could call this an Arbeitsvertrag
Contract for services: a contract with an independent contractor, for example with a translator.
In more recent times, the term Service agreement or Service contract has begun to be used to mean something like Wartungsvertrag. The meaning would be expected by a non-lawyer, but it doesn’t exactly help having a third entity here. Whenever you have to translate something headed Contract for Services, work out what it is before you start.
Now in German law, this distinction between employee and independent contractor is perfectly familiar, but the contract titles don’t follow it. We have:
Dienstvertrag: contract to perform an activity, for instance to work for 40 (or fewer) hours per week. Arbeitsvertrag (contract of employment) is a subcategory.
Werkvertrag: contract to produce a result, for example to make a photograph.
This is a bit peculiar to my mind, as you could have a Dienstvertrag to bake pizzas for three hours, or a Werkvertrag to produce a certain number of pizzas, and the two would be different legal arrangements. And for instance, if you pay a gardener to mow the lawn for two hours, it is a Dienstvertrag, because it’s measured in hours.
It isn’t always easy to draw the line between the two contracts, and there are mixed contracts, but that’s going too far for my purposes here.
So we have two dichotomies, one in English and one in German, and they are not the same. You cannot go around translating Dienstvertrag as contract of service and Werkvertrag as contract for services. Nor can you say, if a gardener I pay for two hours’ work a week has a Dienstvertrag in German, that because he has a contract for services in English, you will translate it that way. We have two different legal systems with two different distinctions.
And for years I used to find that students found this all too much and when they were confronted with the German terms they just applied the English terms because they wanted them to be right. Not that I imagine that Microsoft translator was one of mine.
By the way, under German law translators usually have a Werkvertrag and interpreters a Dienstvertrag – that is if they’re freelances. In England, they would both have a contract for services.
Lamm mit Minzsauce ja.
Lamm mit Pfefferminzsauce nein.
Lamm mit Pfefferminzsauce einschließlich Pfefferminzlikör kotz spei würg.
The German housewives’ programme ARD-Buffet has a daily lunch recipe, devoted today – so they say – to England, as one of the World Cup contestants. So today’s recipe is lamb with mint sauce. They did also admit that it was a Middle Eastern recipe, but I feel very bad about the way they did not distinguish between mint and peppermint – both were waved around and referred to. And the 10 ml of luminous green peppermint liqueuer made me feel very bad.
What’s more, the Turks understand which is the right mint, and you can get it fresh or dried at Turkish greengrocers’. So do they really use peppermint with lamb in the Middle East?
Of course, it may be a ploy to attack the England team yet again.
bq. 1 Bund Minze
300 ml Lammfond
1 Zwiebel
4 EL Butterschmalz
10 ml Minzlikör
1 EL kalte Butter
1 TL Speisestärke
300 g grüne Bohnen
1 Schalotte
60 ml Gemüsebrühe
300 g Lammrücken
Salz, Pfeffer