Following a discussion about Schrittgeschwindigkeit (dead slow) on an ITI list, may I remind people that the Highway Code (British road rules) is online.

The German Straßenverkehrsgesetz (Road Traffic Act) is too.

Here’s an AmE>BE driving dictionary and something about road signs in the USA from the same site, which has a lot of information.

I am sure such materials are online for Austria and Switzerland and for other English-speaking countries.

Feeling jaded – need some excitement? Jobs for translators (interpreters?) in Iraq. Contract is for 12 months (or perhaps less?)

Thanks to Tim Slater on Compuserve for the link.

bq. Am Sonntag gehen Vater und Sohn regelmäßig in den Sprachzoo. Dort schauen sie sich vom Aussterben bedrohte grammatische Phänomene an. Am liebsten mögen sie den Konjunktiv. Gerne hülfen sie ihm, denn sie haben Angst, er stürbe aus.

Zwiebelfisch im Spiegel Online

bq. “Spräche jeder so wie du, lieber Henry, schwämmen mir als Kolumnisten die Felle davon”, erwidere ich augenzwinkernd. “Schwämmen oder schwömmen?”, fragt Henry, und schon stecken wir mitten im Sumpf der unregelmäßigen Verben. “Büke der Bäcker sein Brot mit mehr Gefühl, verdürbe es nicht so schnell”, sagt Henry. “Spönnest du weniger, so stürbe ich nicht gleich vor Lachen!”, entgegne ich. “Hübe jeder seinen Müll auf, gewönne die Stadt an Lebenswert”, kontert Henry. “Gnade!”, rufe ich, “das ist ja nicht mehr auszuhalten! Hübe heißt es ganz bestimmt nicht*!” – “Das ist veraltet”, sagt Henry, “aber was alt ist, muss nicht gleich falsch sein. Kennte ich noch mehr alte Konjunktive, so würfe ich sie liebend gerne ins Gespräch ein!”

Even more important is the use of the two different subjunctive forms in reported speech – every journalist has to know them well.

Subjunctive is pretty rare in English now, slightly less so in the USA than in Britain. There are formulaic expressions like ‘God save the Queen’ (Gott schütze…, not, surprisingly enough, Gott rette…!), ‘Be that as it may’, there’s the hypothetical ‘If I were you’, although ‘If I was you’ is not wrong, just a stylistic choice, there’s the concessive subclause such as ‘…though the price be high’, and there’s the mandative (common in US English) ‘It is necessary that every member inform himself or herself of these rules’.

(via Kaltmamsell)

Another subject people sometimes get hot under the collar about is that of names of foreign cities. Perhaps it would be worth learning some factoids for the purposes of small talk, in view of the energy wasted on anger about people who say Tbilisi for what was once Tiflis, Beijing for Peking, Mumbai for Bombay, and in language hat’s case, Kyiv for Kiev (he also discusses Torino / Turin, but that seems less controversial).

Robin Stocks has given a good summary of the FAZ article on translators that appeared recently. As he writes, there has been some heated discussion on pt (Yahoo) as to whether it’s fair or unfair to translators. The article is in German and appeared in the careers section and its emphasis is on technical translations for industry, either by in-house translators or by solo freelances, although the freelances interviewed appear to be running agencies, and the article does not distinguish the two.

Robin points out that the story of a mistranslation reported by one of the translators interviewed is reported the wrong way round. He also summarizes the reactions to the article on pt.

The BBC reports: Canny Scots create muckle archive.

It’s St. Andrew’s Day, of course.

‘The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS) has been put together by the University of Glasgow and has taken three years to compile. Comprising 400 texts from Broad Scots to Scottish English, it is thought to be the largest work of its kind. Its creators want to use it to capture the country’s rich linguistic, historical and cultural background.’