The Budapest Business Journal presents a little rant about the Hungarian National Office for Translations and Attestations (OFFI):

bq. Everyone has a tale to tell about the creaking grasp of certain languages too often displayed by those who translate for this creaking institution, founded way back in 1869. If you’re a native English speaker, for one, a glance at OFFI’s website will provide plenty of chuckles, where the text appears in places to have been written in some 19th century form of Hunglish.

bq. The trouble is, of course, is that if a translation has the OFFI seal and jolly little ribbon attached, then for all intents and purposes in the eyes of the law, the pope is Jewish if the OFFI version has it so.

Here is the English OFFI site. There is indeed a contrast in style here:

bq. OFFI Rt.’s operation is supported by modern background technology developed and upgraded over the years while responding to stringent requirements. The core of the IT support is a computer network which not only offers word processing software to support the core business but also handles business administration and provides electronic contacting facilities.

Breitenbach are selling Wahlschlappen in a choice of four colours.

This is not easy to translate as Wahlschlappe means a bad election result – a party is said to have suffered a Wahlschlappe (heavy losses), whereas Schlappen are slippers.

I see they have the domain name too, surely not a popular one. Some legislation is on the cards in Britain to prevent people from making money on Olympics 2012-type language. I doubt something like this would have been caught.

bq. Existing legislation already prevents non-official sponsors from using distinctive “Olympic marks” like the Olympic rings.
But the new bill will make it illegal to combine words like “games”, “medals”, “gold”, “2012”, “sponsor” or “summer” in any form of advertising.

LATER NOTE: One has to be careful in translating political colours. For example, we wouldn’t say in English that the Bavarian electorate is largely black.

(Via Peter Müller)

I happened on the Wikipedia entry on legal translation:

bq. Only professional translators specialising in legal translation should translate legal documents and scholarly writings. The mistranslation of a passage in a contract, for example, could lead to lawsuits and loss of money.

Well, loss of money for some, gain of money for others.

bq. Translators of legal texts often consult law dictionaries, especially bilingual law dictionaries. Care should be taken, as some bilingual law dictionaries are of poor quality and their use may lead to mistranslation.

I’m not knocking the entries on legal translation and law dictionary. Just wondering why all the books they recommend are written by the same person.

Wayne Leman’s Better Bibles Blog is about Bible translations and how to improve them. There are links to various resources and other blogs. It lists 22 versions of the Bible and readers can post their specific comments under each version. There are also some polls on language use. I haven’t seen this blog before, but it appears it started in April 2005.

Incidentally, while it’s still Sunday, Abnu points out that about 1000 people a day were getting SMSs about the Pope in the last few days – limited to 160 characters.

bq. Hurra! Du hast Dich zum SMS-Gottesdienst angemeldet.

Deutsch Welle reports.

I know there’s a furniture war on, but I also realise that Möbel Neubert won’t be trying to sell me a double commode (note: false friend). The penny only dropped a couple of hours later.

This is posted for Tony of Germersheim, at his suggestion. I don’t know if he wants to lower the tone of this weblog even further or raise it. The Chinese appears to mean something like ‘Good taste little restaurant’ – possibly some would disagree.

The yellow handle in the foreground probably explains itself. In the background is a further clue to the first picture above.

I am trying out Gvisit (which I read about on Sonja’s blog) and Clustrmaps (which I read about on Isabella’s blog). See bottom right column.

Unten in der rechten Spalte: Links zu zwei Sites, die Aufrufe dieser Site graphisch auf einer Weltkarte darstellen.

Gvisit just records recent visitors, apparently, but it gives names of towns. Clustrmaps recalls all of them, but mine hasn’t been going long. On Isabella’s site (scroll down) you can see one that’s been running for some time (I envy her the red spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean).