In an earlier entry I mentioned an article and dissertation by Heidemarie Markhardt on Austrian German in the EU. The dissertation has now appeared as a book, or a book based on the dissertation has appeared:

MARKHARDT, Heidemarie (2005): Das Österreichische Deutsch im Rahmen der EU., Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2005 (376 Seiten). ISBN 3-631-53084-6.

It can be ordered through info@peterlang.com. Here’s the publisher’s page, with details about other books in the same series too:

Heidemarie Markhardt (Autorin)
Das Österreichische Deutsch im Rahmen der EU
Österreichisches Deutsch Sprache der Gegenwart. Herausgegeben von Rudolf Muhr und Richard Schrodt, Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles etc; 2005

ISSN 1618-5714
ISBN 3-631-53084-6

The Bundeskanzleramt site also has a little blurb on the book:

Markhardt-Buch: Das Österreichische Deutsch im Rahmen der EU

Elfriede Jelinek, Literaturnobelpreisträgerin 2004, hat mehrmals darauf hingewiesen, wie sehr sich ihre Sprache und diejenige ihrer österreichischen Kollegen wie z.B. Peter Handke, Friederike Mayröcker oder Ernst Jandl von deutschen Schriftstellern unterscheide, auch durch eine andere „Musikalität“. Unsere Englisch-Übersetzerin Dr. Heidemarie Markhardt hat ein grundlegendes Werk, basierend auf ihrer Dissertation, veröffentlicht: „Das Österreichische Deutsch im Rahmen der EU“. Eingehend setzt sie sich mit den österreichischen Ausdrücken der deutschen Sprache auseinander, die durch das so genannte Protokoll Nr. 10 offiziellen Eingang in die EU fanden. Es geht nicht nur um Paradeiser (dt. Tomaten), Erdäpfel (dt. Kartoffeln) oder Marillen (dt. Aprikosen). Für Feinspitze, die das Deutsche differenziert genießen wollen, unbedingt lesenswert.

Thanks to Rainer Langenhan for alerting me to the following:

Icelandic Online Dictionary and Readings

Quote:

bq. Working in partnership with the University of Iceland and a number of other sponsors (including The Andrew Mellon Foundation) the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections group has created the Icelandic Online Dictionary and Readings website. This website also complements the University of Iceland’s Internet course, “Icelandic Online”. Persons interested in learning a bit about Icelandic will appreciate the fact that they have access to the aforementioned course, complete with interactive lessons and exercises. Additionally, the site contains the unabridged content of the 1989 Concise Icelandic-English dictionary and a set of readings in modern Icelandic life, literature and culture. As an extra treat, visitors also have access to a collection of works by the famous Icelandic poet, Jonas Hallgrimsson. Visitors will want to make sure and read some of his well-known poems, including “The Vastness of the Universe” and “The Style of the Times”.

It does take me back to Old Norse (online course) and Bandamanna Saga. I had a quick look at Jonas Hallgrimsson too. I attempted to read The Pipit, but was disappointed to find the audio file was the English version, read in a very mysterious accent that sounded like a cross between Shetland and U.S. (Dick Ringler). It’s all useful stuff, although it teeters on the brink of burlesque:

bq. The events described in this poem appear to go back to about the time of Jónas’s seventh birthday. When his father’s estate was probated a few years later, in October 1816, it included a two-year-old ram and a three-year-old dark grey horse (þrevetru trippi, dökkgráu [1D354]). There is a good chance that these are the animals mentioned in the poem and entrusted to young Jónas’s care. Since the colt will have been born in 1813 and the poem describes it as being in its second year (á annan vetri) when these events occurred, everything points to the autumn and early winter of 1814-5, and this tallies with what is known of the weather at that time: “The autumn was mild, except for a spell of bad weather around Michaelmas [29 September]]; then on 7 November the north was hit by a violent storm that damaged hay, buildings, boats, and livestock” (ÁfÍ215).

Spiegel Online has a curiously named section Fishwrap (Want to know what the German papers are saying?). It’s illustrated by a picture of two herring, I think, in a German tabloid-sized newspaper. I presume it’s named after the Guardian’s The Wrap, which is no longer free of charge. I thought this was a wrap-up of the news, but I may be missing something in understanding the reason for these names. Does it mean reading a summary of the news on the paper used to wrap up fish and chips (rather than raw herring)?

Here are a couple of quotes from the current Fishwrap:

bq. Will Iran be next? Will Bush wage war with every “Outpost of Tyranny”? What will happen to trans-Atlantic relations? Why does America celebrate its new president with a pompous event fit for a king or a dictator? Does this all really matter? These are the pressing questions for which German editorialists seek to divine answers on Friday.

I didn’t really start this blog in order to pull other translators’ work to pieces, so maybe I should let the text speak for itself. There are five things I’m not happy with there.

Another characteristic that is striking elsewhere in the article is the use of colloquial English that would be unusual in British or American writing. Even contractions are not common. Here is some more:

bq. Newspaper editors watched, too, and they’re having a field day with his inaugural speech in Friday’s editions. Surprisingly, only one paper predicts disaster, but if George W. Bush thought he would get the kid glove treatment over here, he can just forget it.

Referring to Die Tageszeitung:

bq. “Describing US President George W. Bush as a proselytizing crackpot leader of a superpower bristling with weapons doesn’t really move things forward, it doesn’t solve any problems and though offensive, it’s not especially original anymore,” it writes. “At the same time: Those who don’t want to take seriously this madness, which Bush did his best to show before and after his inauguration speech, are in for a terrible surprise from the US government.”

The translators are obviously briefed to use contractions frequently and to find colloquial expressions, which is particular hard for non-native speakers. It seems to me we have to look forward to a lot more of this international English. I wanted to say it’s an impoverishment of the language, but I don’t know if that’s the point. It reminds me of flying Lufthansa and reading their two-language magazine. The English there is hard to fault – it doesn’t have the errors seen above – but it follows the German very closely. I associate it with the enclosed air of a plane.

I note that Lufthansa Bordbuch in English is part of an online corpus of translations into English (and the German part is in a corpus too).

Robin Stocks at Carob reports on errors in the Polish version of the EU constitution, which has already been published in the Official Journal.

Der Standard:

bq. Warschau – Die EU-Verfassung ist sehr mangelhaft ins Polnische übersetzt worden. Die Ratifizierung könnte dadurch nicht nur um einige Monate verzögert werden, sondern könnte sogar gefährdet sein, berichtete am Mittwoch die polnische Tageszeitung “Rzeczpospolita”. Die Fehler betreffen auch wichtige Mechanismen: So ist bei der Wahl des Komitees für Sozialpolitik von einer qualifizierten Mehrheit der Mitgliedsländer die Rede, obwohl es durch eine einfache Mehrheit bestimmt wird. In der ersten Version würde Polen über nur eine Stimme verfügen, in der anderen hätte Polen dank eines komplizierten Rechnungssystems einen wesentlich größeren Einfluss bekommen.

Rainer Langenhan reports the following talk in German on copyright law for translators. Should be of particular interest to literary translators.

Am Donnerstag, 27.01.2005, 16.30 – 18.00 Uhr, hält Prof. Dr. Maximilian Herberger im Gebäude 4, Konferenzsaal 120, in der Universität des Saarlandes einen Gastvortrag zum Thema “Urhebervertragsrecht für Übersetzer”.

Christopher Moore has written a book, In Other Words, about untranslatables (via translation eXchange).

The NPR site lists some of these words/phrases from various languages. It also has an audio link for an interview.

They include ilunga, from the Tshiluba language, which has been done to death in the media.

For German, the word Korinthenkacker is given:

bq. korinthenkacker [core-in-ten-cuck-er] (noun)
A “raisin pooper” — that is, someone so taken up with life’s trivial detail that they spend all day crapping raisins. You can spot these types a mile off — it’s that irritating pen pusher or filing fanatic whose favorite job is tidying up the stationery cupboard.

I don’t think anyone’s ever told Christopher Moore the difference between raisins and currants.

It sounds like a bit of light reading, just listing such a miscellaneous collection. And is this word not chosen because it is amusing, especially to those who haven’t heard it before? It doesn’t seem untranslatable, although the best equivalents are even more colloquial (I suggest a fart in a colander). Collins has fusspot.

Strangely, Lions Club International has the web address www.korinthenkacker.de. And the book Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen I’ve already lusted after it, but I have too much else to read) gives the synonym Tüpflischeisser.