Noon

chefgroup.jpg

www.noon.co.uk

bq. The Noon range is also exported to Europe where it is supplied in multi-lingual packaging offering a ‘ready-to-go’ solution to the ever-increasing demand for quality, ethnic prepared meals and snacks.

bq. All products within the Noon range are free from any artificial additives, colours or preservatives and are made with halal meat

Chicken tikka masala with pilau rice. I wouldn’t have marked it with two hot peppers, but my, was it delicious.

It had to be said.

What is chicken? / Was ist Huhn?

Frigaliment Importing Co. v. B.N.S. International Sales Corp. 190 F.Supp. 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1960)

This is an old case but I seem to have missed it:

The issue is, what is chicken? Plaintiff says ‘chicken’ means a young chicken, suitable for broiling and frying. Defendant says ‘chicken’ means any bird of that genus that meets contract specifications on weight and quality, including what it calls ‘stewing chicken’ and plaintiff pejoratively terms ‘fowl’. Dictionaries give both meanings, as well as some others not relevant here.

The plaintiff wanted broilers and fryers, but it failed to convey this to the defendant.

Plaintiff stresses that, although these and subsequent cables between plaintiff and defendant, which laid the basis for the additional quantities under the first and for all of the second contract, were predominantly in German, they used the English word ‘chicken’; it claims this was done because it understood ‘chicken’ meant young chicken whereas the German word, ‘Huhn,’ included both ‘Brathuhn’ (broilers) and ‘Suppenhuhn’ (stewing chicken), and that defendant, whose officers were thoroughly conversant with German, should have realized this. Whatever force this argument might otherwise have is largely drained away by Bauer’s testimony that he asked Stovicek what kind of chickens were wanted, received the answer ‘any kind of chickens,’ and then, in German, asked whether the cable meant ‘Huhn’ and received an affirmative response.

Via The Volokh Conspiracy, which also links to Chicken Law in an Eggshell.

Ich werde ein Berliner

The Independent reports that the Guardian is soon to become a Berliner.

Having last year decided to join the exodus from the broadsheet market – led by The Independent, with The Times in hot pursuit – but plumping for the hybrid Berliner size rather than a tabloid shape, The Guardian’s stately progress became a gallop when it brought forward the date of its conversion.

English Wikipedia:

Most modern newspapers are in one of three sizes:
* broadsheets (29½ by 23½ inches, or about 749 by 597 mm), generally associated with more intellectual newspapers.
* tabloids: half the size of broadsheets, and often seen as sensationalist in contrast to them.
* Berliner or midi (470×315 mm), used by European papers such as Le Monde.

German Wikipedia:

Norddeutsches Format (auch Nordisches Format) (400 x 570 mm)
Rheinisches Format (350 x 510 mm oder 360 x 530 mm)
Schweizer Format (320 x 475 mm)
Berliner Format (315 x 470 mm)
Kleinformate
Halbnordisches Format (auch Tabloid oder Half-Broadsheet, 235 x 315 mm oder 285 x 400 mm)
Halbrheinisches Format (260 x 325 mm)
Halbes Berliner Format
Weitere Formate
* Broadsheet (295 x 533 mm)
* Halbes Schweizer Format (240 x 330 mm)
* Tabloid Extra (305 x 457 mm)
Sondergrößen
* Asahi Shimbun (Japan) (405 x 545 mm)
* Le Figaro (Frankreich) (425 x 600 mm)
* New York Times (390 x 585 mm)
* Prawda (Russland) (420 x 594 mm)

JurisPedia

LAWgical reports that three universities, in Montreal, Montpellier and Saarbrücken, have started a kind of academic JuraWiki. The former has 52 articles at present, apparently; the latter has 3157 pages.

Looking at the first screen of JurisPedia, it presents Arabic, English, German, French, Spanish and Chinese pages. Starting with the English pages, I found a recent entry called Introduction to the basic and the constitutional law (de) – but not in German, in (non-native) English:

bq. The basic law of the Federal Republic of Germany is the actually legal version of a constitution that realises the idea of governing the state and protecting the rights of the state’s citizens and humans. The Federal Constitutional Court was furthermore created to be the Basic Law’s guardian. It watches over the observance of newly created rights and amplifies by this the specifications of this law.

I wish people did not believe that furthermore means also in every possible context! Sorry about that outburst – I am going to have to get used to this. I could not find any German entries at all, but I did find myself suddenly in the (empty?) German section of Belgium.

This JurisPedia has a slightly French slant, I imagine. JuraWiki is basically German, although of course it offers English too. The standard English and German Wikipedias also offer law.

In casting around for examples, I came across a ‘Simple’ English Wikipedia. Here is some comic relief on law from that:

bq. A jurist is a professional who studies and argues the rules of law. An ethicist is someone who usually works only within codes of conduct based upon what people feel is right or wrong rather than what the law says.

bq. When leaders enforce the legal code honestly, even upon themselves and their friends, this is called rule of law. It’s rare – but many people believe it is possible, especially in a democracy. Some people don’t like the idea of the rule of law because they think it’s more about keeping the power in the hands of the people who already have it, rather than keeping everybody safe.

I wonder if this was discussed at Wikimania. I realize a Wiki is what its users make it, but the more there are, the less hope there is of sense taking hold.

There is also a Wiktionary, btw, which is a huge project. I’m mentioning it here for the sake of completeness.

P.S. I apologize for any capitalization errors in words like LAWgical, WikiMania, JurisPedia and so on. I just cannot be bothered to look these things up.

Yahoo Search Translator /Yahoo Suche Translator

Michael Eichelhäher gesucht

Yahoo! Suche Translator BETA:

bq. Yahoo! Suche Translator findet die relevantesten Seiten zu Ihrem Suchbegriff in mehreren Sprachen und gibt die Suchergebnisse in deutscher Sprache aus.

This must have appeared in July and I missed it:

bq. Yahoo plans to launch on Thursday a service that translates German search queries into English and French and returns results from around the globe in German.

bq. Currently, less than 10 percent of all Web pages are in German, so when German speakers search the Internet for information they are missing out on the huge amount of content that may be useful to them but is in a different language, said Eckart Walther, vice president of product management at Yahoo Search.

Anyway, machine translation will give the gist of many sites, and if not, it’s a convenient way to get some light relief.

I looked up Enten (ducks). Curiously, Enten was obviously translated into English, but not always translated back – Ducks Unlimited was announced as Duckt unbegrenztes, and Ducks of the World as Duckt sich von der Welt, but it was always possible to click on the original English text.

A search for Bratwurst produced a Wisconsin site as the first hit:

bq. Bratwurst, Nahrung Seele Wisconsins
Einschließlich Rezepte für Bratwurst und klassische Seiten
“nichts geht besser als Bier, Gören und Babys und Michael Eichelhäher am Wochenende TTN”

bq. Bratwurst, Wisconsin’s Soul Food
Including Recipes for Bratwurst and Classic Sides
“Nothing goes better than beer, brats and babes and Michael Jay on the Weekend TTN”

(From Peter Müller)