In the last entry, I mentioned – inter alia – non-native speakers of English correcting my grammar.
This has been met by a couple of rants about Germans writing English.
I do feel like ranting against Germans correcting English myself sometimes, but not always.

One correction: non-native speakers of English who know the subject area can be very useful and perfectly good revisers. It’s very useful for me to have a reviser. And I recognize good revision when I see it, much as I hate to admit mistakes.
Conversely, anyone who wants the opinion of a native speaker of English on a publication should get one who’s experienced in dealing with texts and/or publication.

Usual scenario: Translator translates for German lawyer.
German lawyer may speak English but has no time to translate.
Translator may have questions.
Sometimes there’s an odd term. I ask for a definition in German.
Reactions: 1) Omit it
or 2) I will rephrase the original
or 3) This is what it means in German:
or 4) Let me see, I’m not sure if I can tell you how to say that in English (I don’t like this, and it shows the client doesn’t realize translators simply need a German rephrase, that is, they need to understand the source text)

Less common: T translates a church or castle guide
Author may be a much-published historian – usually no problem
Author may be a little-published historian at the beginning of his or her career, and very ambitious – can be difficult
Author may be an amateur who sees the building and guide as his or her life’s work – can be difficult
Author may have time on hands
Usual reaction to translation: 10 or 20 corrections or queries
Occasional reaction: call in a “specialist” in English.

More examples in the continuation. Continue reading →

Sometimes the translation business raises questions.

1. Translate into English (About the painter Poliakoff):

Als 13. von 14 Kindern nahm ihn seine gläubige Mutter täglich mit in die Kirche. [As the thirteenth of fourteen children, his religious mother took him to church with her every day.]

Who was the thirteenth child, the mother or the painter? If it was the painter, why did she take him – was she superstitious? (Actually, the only Poliakoff I remember ran a mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy).

2. Message from author: Replace Mark Rothko’s Violett Grün Rot with rot, weiß, braun. Text remains the same. (So why didn’t he stick to black and white?)

3. Client says the defendants really are copying our trademark in the Erkennungsleiste of their web site. Translator looks at website but can’t see any kind of Leiste. In addition, there is no such thing as an Erkennungsleiste [recognition toolbar?])
Client is at a meeting. Colleagues say, ‘Just write “web site”.’

4. Client says, ‘The translation was first-class. But just one thing – why did you write express agreement and not expressive agreement?’

5. Author’s English expert (a native German, Leipzig): ‘I have the impression the translator has researched the terminology very well, but her grammar is certainly not that of a native speaker, as I can tell from my university study of English.’ Translator spends several hours refuting grammar ‘errors’ that never were errors except to a non-native speaker (can anyone suggest a better tactic?). A couple of the errors were content errors though, but only 1%. The author, a clergyman: ‘This has been a helpful exercise, as the translation is now improved’.

6. Author’s quote: ‘The translator’s English is unreliable. In English, there are never commas before relative sentences, nor before ‘but’ or ‘that’.’The painting is said to date from’ should be ‘The painting allegedly dates from’. ‘It was known as the chapter-house’ should be ‘the so-called chapter-house’.

7. Some clients are very secretive and won’t tell me the name of the firm the translation is about. It becomes ‘XXX’. So I can’t get all that useful information from their website about the machinery they produce etc. Fortunately, some clients blank out the hyperlinks in the document with XXX, but the hyperlink still works. Or they leave the name of the company in the file details. (Some clients exchange cheeky notes with the secretary in the file details).

Two mosque leaders in Albany, New York, accused of supporting terrorism, may have been the victims of a translation error, according to Yahoo News:

bq. [Prosecutors] said a word on one page, written in Arabic, referred to Aref as “commander.” In fact, the word was Kurdish, and could be translated as “brother,” according to prosecutors.

bq. Reviewing the page for the newspaper, Nijyar Shemdin, the U.S. representative for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington, said he did not see how a translation would have come up with the word “commander.” He also said Aref was referred to with the common honorific “kak,” which could mean brother or mister.

The New York Times also reports, with more details (this was all part of a sting operation).

bq. However, many of the conversations between the informant and the men were in Urdu, as well as in Arabic and English, and Mr. Kindlon said there might be problems with the translations of those meetings, as well.

bq. In court documents, the government provided only snippets of the conversations already translated.

Thanks to John Lynch of the Forensic Linguistics list.

When I was in London recently I picked up a copy of Nigel Foster’s Austrian Legal System and Laws, ISBN 1-85941-757-4
It cost £35 (amazon.de is offering it from 85.95 euros, which is worrying)

There is also Hausmaninger, The Austrian Legal System 3rd ed., ISBN 3-214-00289-9

I have only the first edition of Hausmaninger, dated 1998. That has less substantive law than Foster. But I don’t know if the later editions are fuller.

Maybe books on ‘smaller’ legal systems concentrate more on the framework. They expect you to know a lot about German-language civil law (and criminal law) from books about German law. That was the impression I got from a book on Canadian law, that it wanted to spare me the basics: Stephan Handschug, Einführung in das kanadische Recht, 2003, ISBN 3-406-50826-X – a lot about constitutional matters in there (perhaps the more so since the written constitution is relatively recent).

Kenneth A. Adams, A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, has been published by the American Bar Association Press. At the book’s site, you can see the table of contents, and there are also articles by the author. The site also tells you how to get hold of the book – it was only published in July 2004, so it’s rather scarce as yet.

From the back-cover blurb:

bq. The focus of this manual is not what provisions to include in a given contract, but instead how to express those provisions in prose that is free of the problems that often afflict contracts. This manual highlights common sources of inefficiency, dispute, and misunderstanding and recommends how to avoid them. It offers a level of practical detail not found elsewhere in the literature on drafting.

I see the author originally studied medieval archaeology at York University.

(via Mark Adler of Clarity)

Süddeutsche Zeitung am 11. August:

bq. Erst nach und nach jedoch wird offenbar, wie sehr das Aus für den kleinen Münchner Spezialstudiengang das Ausbildungs-Modell für Übersetzer und Dolmetscher in ganz Bayern in eine Schieflage bringt. Händeringend suchen Berufsstand und Kultusbeamte nun nach einer Lösung.

bq. Dass die Misere entstehen konnte, hat seinen ursprünglichen Grund nicht in der Eilentscheidung der FH, sondern liegt an einer bayerischen Besonderheit. Überall sonst in Deutschland ist die Ausbildung von Übersetzern und Dolmetschern ein akademisches Studium, das bundesweit acht Universitäten und fünf Fachhochschulen anbieten. In Bayern dagegen wird sie der beruflichen Bildung zugeschlagen und ist an Fachakademien angesiedelt. Fünf gibt es in Bayern, zwei davon in München. Die dreijährige Ausbildung endet mit einer staatlichen Prüfung, die jährlich mehrere Hundert ablegen. Wer wollte, konnte bislang an der FH noch ein viersemestriges Studium draufsatteln, um das Diplom zu machen.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that the Munich Fachhochschule translation course is closing.

Richard Schneider’s Nachrichtenportal at the Übersetzer-Portal links to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that appeared on August 11th on the topic.

The curious thing about this article is that it laments the loss of something that never really got off the ground. Richard Schneider is also of the opinion that Bavaria needs a university translation course. Germany, says the article, has eight universities and 5 Fachhochschulen offering an academic course. Bavaria has five Fachakademien offering a vocational course.

The article points out that the current Bavarian Fachakademie qualification is recognized by some British universities, so students can get a British MA. That’s one of the anomalies now. Qualifications are very important in Germany. And lack of them may have a long-term effect on your salary. You can get an MA in Germany and go grey achieving it. You can get one in Britain in a year, if you can pay the fees and do the work.

Antje Kopp, Vice-President of the BDÜ, forecasts that court interpreters will soon need an academic qualification (she refers to a Green Paper of the EU commission on the harmonization of criminal procedure). In which languages, I wonder?