While pursuing some terminology online, I found some rather touching evidence of a seminar at the University of Saarbrücken where an English original of part of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods (CISG, UN-Abkommen zum internationalen Warenkauf) was carefully compared with an ‘official’ translation and a Babelfish translation:

bq. Artikel 15 (Englisches Original)
(1) An offer becomes effective when it reaches the offeree.
(2) An offer, even if it is irrevocable, may be withdrawn if the withdrawal reaches the offeree before or at the same time as the offer.

bq. Artikel 15 (Amtliche Übersetzung)
(1) Ein Angebot wird wirksam, sobald es dem Empfänger zugeht.
(2) Ein Angebot kann, selbst wenn es unwiderruflich ist, zurückgenommen werden, wenn die Rücknahmeerklärung dem Empfänger vor oder gleichzeitig mit dem Angebot zugeht.

bq. Artikel 15 (Babelfish-Übersetzung)
(1) wird ein Angebot wirkungsvoll, wenn es das offeree erreicht.
(2) kann ein Angebot, selbst wenn es unwiderruflich ist, entnommen werden, wenn die Zurücknahme das offeree vor erreicht, oder zur gleichen Zeit wie das Angebot.

The texts were carefully compared, following a neat scheme:
Teil A: Erkennen der Satzstrukturen
Teil B: Grammatik
Teil C: Wortschatz
Teil D: Rechtschreibung
Teil E: Zusammenfassung
Teil F: Kommentierte Link-Liste
Teil G: CISG Artikel 14-24 und deren Übersetzungen
Teil H: Anhang

But sometimes process isn’t enough.

bq. Darüberhinaus fällt auf, daß sich “Babelfish” umso schwerer mit der syntaktisch korrekten Übersetzung tut, je länger, komplizierter und verschachtelter die Sätze sind. Einfach aufgebaute Sätze werden in aller Regel wesentlich korrekter wiedergegeben als komplexere Satzgebilde.

Actually, I know how Babelfish feels. And there are a lot worse texts around than this one!

I had the feeling the inversion resulted from the numbers at the beginning of each subsection being mistaken for the first word in the sentence.

This seems to date from 1998, and I suspect people are less naive now. I do remember a lawyer doing something like this a few years ago: doing a machine translation and being rather disappointed.

Today is the fourth Sunday in Lent and so it is Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday in Britain. I wasn’t aware of that, nor that in Germany and American Mother’s Day is on 8 May (and 29 May in France). I was surprised it was different from the USA, because my mother wouldn’t have it celebrated and said it was an American invention designed to increase sales of flowers and chocolates. It seems I was misled – the holiday was devised by an Appalachian ‘homemaker’ to improve health conditions in the home by addressing mothers.

Various sources fill in more: Wikipedia, the BBC and About.

It seems that Mothering Sunday may have been a day when British people were given a day off to go home to their mother churches. They would take presents for their mothers with them. It fell into disuse and was only really revised under American influence after WWII. About German Language reports:

During the First World War, Switzerland was one the first European countries to introduce Mother’s Day (in 1917). Germany’s first Muttertag observance took place in 1922, Austria’s in 1926 (or 1924, depending on the source). Muttertag was first declared an official German holiday in 1933 (the second Sunday in May) and took on a special significance as part of the Nazi motherhood cult under the Hitler regime. There was even a medal—das Mutterkreuz—in bronze, silver, and gold (eight or more Kinder!), awarded to mothers who produced children for the Vaterland. … After World War II the German holiday became a more unofficial one that took on the cards-and-flowers elements of the U.S. Mother’s Day. In Germany, if Mother’s Day happens to fall on Pfingstsonntag (Pentecost), the holiday is moved to the first Sunday in May.

This doesn’t mention that in East Germany, Mother’s Day coincided with International Women’s Day on 8 March.

Recently I wrote, rather hastily, about the huge and bizarre Webster’s Online Dictionary.

Now Andrew Joscelyne at Blogos has looked into this and really done his homework. The dictionary creator, Philip Parker, was born dyslexic and liked to read dictionaries because their entries were short.

bq. So over the past 30 years he has been collecting dictionaries of all kinds. Around the year 2000, large dictionaries on the web started charging for ‘premium’ words of the sort he needed in his research and that really “pissed him off”. So he decided to leverage the definitions he had collected from his own store, borrowed the out-of-copyright ‘Webster’ badge, and started building WOD, which he intends to make the biggest multilingual dictionary site on the web.

More detail at Blogos.

For those on or near the islands tired of English/Welsh law, Scots law, Northern Irish law, Irish law, Isle of Man law and Jersey law: Guernsey Bar is a new website introducing Guernsey law and lawyers.

bq. The purpose of this site is to introduce the profession of Guernsey Advocate and Guernsey law itself. You will find on this website an introduction to the Guernsey Bar, contact details for Guernsey firms, an introduction to Guernsey law, and extensive advice about how to deal with a Guernsey Advocate in order to get the best out of that professional relationship. There is also a detailed glossary of legal terms and links to other helpful websites.

I fear quite some of the vocabulary in the law dictionary is familiar from English law (Calderbank offer), but I have been fond of Haro since I first encountered it:

bq. Haro: The Clameur de Haro is an ancient self-help remedy or injunction. Clameur literally indicates a great noise, like the English word “clamour”. If a wrong is being done by one person to another’s real property (e.g. by trespass (e.g. knocking down a wall) or nuisance (e.g. causing noxious fumes to spread into a neighbouring property) then the person being wronged may drop to his knees in the presence of two witnesses and say the following: “Haro! Haro! Haro! À l’aide mon Prince, on me fait tort.” Which means literally “Haro! Haro! Haro! Help me my Prince, I am being wronged.” The Lord’s prayer and grace are then recited in French. The appeal is thought to be to the first Norman Duke, Rollon, also known as Rollo, Rolf or Hrolfr. The person against whom the Clameur is raised must stop immediately the action complained of or face proceedings for contempt of court. The person raising the Clameur must register the act with the Court (which may refuse to register the Clameur if wrongly raised) and then commence proceedings against the alleged wrongdoer within a year and a day, or else the clameur will lapse. These days one would only use the Clameur where time did not permit any other more certain remedy and you were very confident of the circumstances. Seek the advice of an Advocate.

Whether it is a good idea to shout out Haro! when noxious fumes are invading your land (what the Germans like to think we call immissions) is another matter.

And usufruit sounds so much fruitier than usufruct, doesn’t it?

(via Delia Venables)

Craig Morris übersetzt und schreibt für heise.de. Im Januar war er zum ersten Mal seit acht Jahren in den USA und beschreibt seine Gefühle über Texas, New Orleans und Deutschland (er lebt in Freiburg im Breisgau). Benachrichtigung über neue Texte über KulturschockUSA-subscribe@yahoogroups.de, ein deutscher Text mit Links hier.

bq. Ich hatte natürlich auch mit vielen grün angehauchten Amerikanern zu tun, da ich Vorträge zum Erfolg der erneuerbaren Energien in Deutschland gehalten habe. Gerade solchen Leuten erscheint Deutschland wie ein Schlaraffenland. Immer wieder musste ich erklären, wie die Deutschen einen Konsens zur Novelle des Erneuerbaren-Energien-Gesetz gefunden hatten; wie sie erfolgreich den Verbrauch von PKWs durch die Ökosteuer gesenkt hatten, während der Verbrauch in den USA steigt; und wie der Müll in Deutschland gleich in den Haushalten mindestens dreifach geteilt wird, damit möglichst viel wiederverwertet werden kann, während die Amerikaner oft alles, was recycelbar ist, irgendwo hinfahren müssen, wenn sie es wiederverwerten wollen (sie müssen nicht), denn zu Hause gibt es nur einen Mülleimer, und der enthält neben Essensresten noch Coladosen, Plastikflaschen, Alu-Folie, Papier, usw.

Craig hat auch ein Buch über erneuerbare Energien geschrieben – auf Deutsch, keine Übersetzung! Es heißt Zukunftsenergien und erscheint auch in der Zukunft.

Craig Morris is a translator on environmental and ecological matters and he writes in English and German for heise.de. In January he visited the USA again for the first time in 8 years and he writes on the places he visited and compares Germany with the USA. Here is a link to be informed about new texts online – culture_shock_USA-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, and here is one of his recent texts.

bq. Of course, a lot of the Americans I met were on the green side of the political spectrum since I was holding lectures on the success of renewable energy in Germany. This group of people is prone to think of Germany as a kind of paradise. Again and again, I explained how Germans had reached a consensus on the Renewable Energy Act; how they successfully used environmental taxes to raise the average gas mileage of cars on the road, while gas mileage in the states has stagnated; and how Germans often have four small trash cans at home so they can sort everything out for the garbage trucks (compost, paper, plastic/metal, and non-recyclable waste), while Americans who want to recycle often have to drive somewhere to drop their trash off – but most of the time, Americans only have one trash can containing everything from leftovers to coke cans, plastic bottles, aluminum foil, paper, etc.