Artikel mit Links in Spiegel Online: Dow Jones lässt seit Januar einige Übersetzungen ins Deutsche in Budapest machen.

An article in Spiegel Online is causing concern to translators into German on at least two mailing lists. Alfa Press, a translation firm in Budapest, founded in late 2003, has since January been translating some financial news items for Dow Jones (in Eschborn) and now has a two-year contract. The typical translator is German, male and about thirty and has happened to find himself in Budapest.

There are six photos. One shows seven translators on four sides of an arrangement of computer tables. They are so cramped that they appear to have no room for reference works, although in another photo it looks as if one may have a glossary, which is lying at right angles between her and the keyboard. The room measures 24 m².

The job requires a one-paragraph news item to be done in under 15 minutes. Dow Jones looked in Romania and Serbia, which would have been cheaper, but it is paying more in Budapest, where there are a number of native German translators and German-speaking Hungarians.

It sounds as if the translators work almost a 12-hour day. In contrast, I’ve heard of people translating into German for the Financial Times Deutschland in shifts: a translator is paid for a shift whether or not translation work falls due, and in this way it’s guaranteed that there is someone available 24 hours a day.

Not only the prices (20% to 50% under those in Germany) are important, but the short notice period, between two weeks and four weeks. So these are not freelances (outsourcing often refers to giving work to freelances).

I think these must be examples (German).

bq. Die Sorge eines Berliners, das ZDF werde wegen der Hochzeit des dänischen Kronprinzen am 14.05.2004 die Sendungen «heute» und «Mittagsmagazin» nicht ausstrahlen, wird vom Verwaltungsgericht Mainz nicht geteilt. Dem Mann fehle es schon am Rechtschutzbedürfnis für seinen Eilantrag, den Sender zur Ausstrahlung der beiden Sendungen zu verpflichten, entschieden die Richter (Az.: 4 L 476/04.MZ). (beck-aktuell)

Not that this would interest many of my readers – well, hardly any, but not without clout … – but both the ARD (Erstes Programm) and the ZDF (Zweites Programm) are broadcasting the Danish royal wedding on Friday.

Udo Vetter in law blog (German) reports that a man in Berlin applied to the administrative court in Mainz to have the broadcast on ZDF stopped, because the news and a midday news magazine programme will be cancelled.

The court was not having this and said the ZDF is free to programme as it wants, apart from certain limits not relevant in the present case. There is a basic right of freedom of information, but this is not a right to a particular programme.

Udo speculates as to whether a private TV station is behind this application. He says it usefully highlights the question as to why these channels still have a right to the fees (fees paid by law for the provision ‘basic information’) even though their programmes are approaching tabloid quality.

(Original source beck-aktuell, German).

Delia Venables links to a group law blog by the University of East Anglia and Norwich Law School: Displacement of Concepts. Subtitle: Thoughts on technology, innovation, law, legal education, economics, cyberspace, intellectual property, and other things of interest to the humans inhabiting the information society, brought to you by a few folks at the University of East Anglia and the Norwich Law School

Céline at Naked Translations Blog links to a Guardian article about the U.S. adaptation of the programme ‘The Office’.

bq. It is not clear whether the problem is that the show loses a great deal in translation, or whether the translation is faithful and Americans do not like that kind of humour – or both.
The American television industry has an unfortunate record of adapting British successes into US flops. A recent adaptation of Coupling lasted only a few weeks.

Well, it took me a good hour to see through the depressing first episode myself, so goodness knows what the Americans would think.

I still find it bizarre to translate programmes for the USA.

In der deutschen Ausgabe der German American Law Journal fragt Clemens Kochinke, ob der Begriff “in dubio pro reo” auch international verwendet wird:

bq. Als Nichtstrafrechtler, der beim Verfassen eines Blogberichts soeben den Begriff ohne Zweifel verwandte, frage ich mich nach fruchtloser Internet-Recherche, ob diese Regel tatsächlich im anglo-amerikanischen Bereich unbekannt ist. Oder kommt er der Presumption of Innocence gleich? Das ist der Grundsatz, den Amerikaner oft nur in den USA, nicht im Rest der Welt vermuten.

Stimmt, es scheint vor allem in den USA, vielleicht auch in England, ein verbreiteter Irrtum zu sein, dass das deutsche (usw.) Strafrecht kein Unschuldsprinzip kennt.

Zum Begriff: für mich ist es nur deutsch. Es ist auch ein Beispiel dafür, dass ein Übersetzer nicht glauben sollten, lateinische Begriffe könnten unverändert übernommen werden.

In the German edition of the German American Law Journal, Clemens Kochinke asks whether the expression ‘in dubio pro reo’ (in cases of doubt, decide in favour of the accused) is purely German or civil law: he encounters it in English texts on the Internet.

I am no expert, but I first met this term when I first read about German law, and I don’t see it as English. It’s a good example to show that Latin phrases in one language cannot simply be taken over unthinkingly in a translation.

I did a Google search on “in dubio pro reo” defendant to get examples of the phrase in English texts. Of the first fifty hits, 49 were clearly in situations related to civil law – German, Dutch or Spanish legal systems. One was an unofficial UN text relating to Dusko Tadic’s sentence (my italics):

bq. Finally, the Trial Chamber notes that Count 8 of the Amended Indictment charged Dusko Tadic alternatively with two distinct offences, namely torture or inhuman treatment, and that the Appeals Chamber, in convicting Dusko Tadic on this Count, did not specify in respect of which of the two offences it found him guilty. As a consequence, an ambiguity undoubtedly exists. Under these circumstances, the Trial Chamber has applied the principle of in dubio pro reo (which states that any ambiguity must accrue to the defendant’s advantage), and has imposed sentence in respect of the lesser offence of inhuman treatment.

I assume that one of the judges came from a civil-law system.

A Google search on “in dubio pro reo” site:uk is even more conclusive: only six hits and none apply to English law. (I don’t suggest that Google is a perfect concordance, but it is useful for a general impression).

The Deutsches Rechts-Lexikon, which is like Creifelds on steroids, was most helpful. It expands the phrase: ‘In dubio pro reo (iudicandum es)’. It says that German law has a Schuldgrundsatz (principle that the defendant must be guilty/blameworthy) and an Unschuldsvermutung (presumption of innocence), and that ‘in dubio pro reo’ is developed from these. So it cannot be the exact equivalent of the common-law presumption of innocence. It applies only at the end of a criminal trial when all the evidence has been presented. (There is a lot more).

The Tadic quote above translates it as ‘any ambiguity must accrue to the defendant’s advantage’. Some dictionaries have ‘the defendant must be given the benefit of the doubt’.

A possibly Bulgarian questioner at ProZ has posted a civil engineering question: what is abstemmen in English? (It’s usually chisel off) Context: Decke-Wand Überstände abstemmen.

This question is marked as potentially offensive (that’s why I looked at it):

bq. Note: The asker has indicated that this question may be regarded as offensive by some. It has not been sent by email or displayed in site lists.

I’m disappointed. Or perhaps I’m just ignorant.