Why is Google placing on my opening page an ad for Swedish translation that is really for a dating agency? I realize ‘Swedish’ means many things to many people, but ‘translation’?

Jemima Kiss is apparently the Julie Burchill of punctuation:

bq. Kicking around in a mailbox: OPA Intelligence Report 2/7/05. That’s the second of July in my world. I can accept that you put your dates in a different order – but it’s just the wrong order! What possible reason is there for putting the month first? It’s completely illogical and worse, could (and almost certainly has) caused some transatlantic communication nightmares.

The comments are fun. I hope this one by an American was tongue-in cheek:

bq. But hey, it’s not world peace, so there’s no use fighting over it.

And there’s a follow-up.

Thanks to Trevor (the Mycroft of the Internet).

I suppose this was done by Sebastian, unless Shannon doesn’t know her prepositions.

Hope this is well lit at night.

This is just so tempting, but I didn’t have anything with me.

Of course, ‘good value’ is one of those flexible concepts.

Fahrräder abstellen verboten

This house belongs to a family called Marx. Perhaps the text is trying to tell me something.

Today a client called. Could I translate an eight-page employment contract into English by the end of March? Answer: most probably, although I need to see the document before I confirm that.

I’m now asking myself when a client last phoned up and wanted something in a civilized period of time? Almost everything recently has been for the next day. I’ve forgotten how to time things like this.

Excuse me tearing my hair out, but I’ve just seen this recommended yet again, and it’s in several dictionaries, and it is wrong!

Under German law, a testator may leave stuff to a Vorerbe (prior heir) and a Nacherbe (subsequent heir). In the usual case, maybe a house to A for life, and when A dies, then to B.

That’s a bit like a life interest and a remainderman (remainderperson in some U.S. usage). A trust arises in English law, but the situation is similar. The remainderman gets what’s left.

These trusts can be quite complex. The testator may leave the estate to A for life, with remainder to B for life, and in that case, since clearly B’s heirs are not included, on B’s death the estate will revert to the testator – or rather, since the testator will be dead, it will revert to the testator’s heirs on intestacy (gesetzliche Erben). They are the reversioners.

It’s not a secret that revert means come back, is it?

But a Nacherbe is not a reversioner, not the heir(s) on intestacy of the testator. It might happen by coincidence, but that is not the definition. If any of those words fit, it will be remainderman, but since that’s a rather old-fashioned word unknown to the general public, people may want to write subsequent heir or final heir or something like that.

I haven’t got one law dictionary here that does not contain reversionary heir, sometimes alone (Dietl), sometimes as one alternative (Romain, von Beseler/Jacobs-Wüstefeld, Lister/Veth).

In About Translation, Riccardo (a long-since Flefoid, perhaps?) reports on translation news. Via Translator’s Blog, by Sonja Tomaskovic, who is building up an annotated links list.