100th birthday Faber Castell 9000 English / Deutsch

The pencil was invented in about 1662 by Friedrich Staedtler. The Nuremberg craftsmen’s supervisory body forbade him to make pencils because he was a joiner, not a white-lead-maker. (Günter Stössel, Nürnberg bei Fürth, ISBN 3 87191 323 5)

But the plot thickens. The only deposit of graphite in solid form ever found was in Cumbria in northern England.

bq. The first attempt to manufacture graphite sticks from powdered graphite was in Nuremberg, Germany in 1662. They used a mixture of graphite, sulphur and antimony. Though usable they were inferior to the English pencils.

More history:

bq. The local name for graphite was “Wad” and even recently a graphite pencil was referred to locally as a “Wad” pencil. In the first half of the 18th Century much stealing and smuggling of the “Wad” was carried on. In 1752 an Act of Parliament was passed making it a felony to steal or receive “Wad”, punishable by hard labour or transportation.

Die FAZ hat heute einen Bericht über schlechtes Simultandolmetschen und TV-Berichterstattung über die Bombenexplosionen in London gestern:

bq. Die Anschläge waren noch keine vier Stunden her, da wollte N24-Chefmoderator Alexander Privitera von einer Expertin wissen, wie man sie auf einer „Qualitätsskala” im Vergleich zu New York und Madrid einstufen müsse. Und bei n-tv waren einzelne Moderatoren schon mit der Aussprache des Wortes „police” überfordert. „Sie haben es ,Tube’ genannt”, staunte ein n-tv-Mann im Gespräch mit einem Reporter. „Sie waren in so einem ,Tube’ eingeschlossen. Wie muß man sich das vorstellen?”

(Via Richard Schneiders Nachrichtenportal)

Joan Fernando Valls Fusté hat seit 1999 ein Übersetzungsbüro in Barcelona. Er schuldet Übersetzern und Dolmetschern Geld, leugnet aber ein Arbeitsverhältnis.

Translators and interpreters have been on a pot-banging demonstration (see pictures) in Barcelona. Joan Fernando Valls Fusté denies any employment relationship.

Details in Catalan from Tina Valles here (scroll down for first announcement), and here.

bq. El propietari de l’empresa, Joan Fernando Valls Fusté, nega que hagi existit una relació laboral amb alguns dels afectats. I en la resta de casos, evita els afectats i fins i tot fingeix que és dues persones diferents: Joan Valls i Fernando Fusté; i amb aquesta actuació ha fet que s’activessin una sèrie de demandes legals. En una d’elles, celebrada fa ben poc i de la qual s’espera que el jutge dicti sentència, el fiscal demana al senyor Valls Fusté dos anys de presó per publicar un llibre sense pagar ni reconèixer l’autoria de la traducció.

More in Trevor’s entry. (Does this count as a contribution to Language Week?)

Robin Stocks wrote on May 15:

bq. Eurodicautom, up to now the EU Commission’s multilingual terminology database, is no longer being updated. It is being replaced by IATE, which describes itself as “an interactive terminology database system for the collection, dissemination and shared management of terminology between the Institutions, Agencies and other bodies of the European Union”.

It now appears that access to IATE is limited to translators working for the EU, and translators who are given passwords have to agree not to use it for non-EU texts.

You’d think the EU would appreciate its database being used widely.

(Thanks to Petra on the juristische_uebersetzer list at Yahoo)

LATER NOTE: (see comments)
Here is an email Paul Thomas received from IATE Support – it’s a wonderful example of EU English:

bq. Hello,
The IATE database has been put into production in the EU’s translation services in summer last year. It is not yet accessible to the public. The URL you have used is a link to a test database; when we noticed that this url has been published in various newsgroups on the internet we had to block the access to avoid performance problems. The system is today simply not ready to be used by the public. However, the development that are necessary IATE available to external users with a satisfying level of service are ongoing. We hope that you will be able to use IATE from the first quarter of 2006.
Until then Eurodicautom will remain accessible (http://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/Controller). Please note that Eurodicautom had some technical problems recently. The system is, however, up and running again.
Best regards,
IATE Support Team
Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU

What is it about Rotenburg an der Wümme? Is it something in the air?

(Later note: sorry, the other one was Rotenburg an der Fulda – see comments)

(Other Rot(h)enburgs)

Time: July 6 at 21.00 and the following 3 weeks
Station: BBC Radio 4 (can be heard on the Internet at the BBC website)
How long: 30 minutes
Textual Evidence
PDJames explores the emerging field of Forensic Linguistics. In a rare insight into the world of language, science and the law, this programme uses real-life criminal cases and actual police recordings to illustrate how linguistics and judicial procedure increasingly overlap.

More information here (scroll down).

(Thanks to Professor Malcolm Coulthard of the Forensic Linguistics mailing list)