There’s a Dictionary of the Scots Language online. You can browse headwords on the left.

I looked up but and ben (= without and within), with difficulty: it’s under but, but not as a noun phrase referring to a small house. Nor is deoch and doris. Still, I suppose Harry Lauder is not the absolute source.

bq. The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) comprises electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and the Scottish National Dictionary (SND). DOST contains information about Scots words in use from the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries (Older Scots); and SND contains information about Scots words in use from the eighteenth century to the present day (modern Scots). These are the most comprehensive dictionaries available for, respectively, Older Scots and modern Scots, and are therefore essential research tools for anyone interested in the history of either Scots or English language, and for historical or literary scholars whose sources are written in Scots or may contain Scots usages.

I’d like to recommend a book. The Scots Thesaurus. This is not just a thesaurus: it contains definitions of the words too. (The one at amazon appears to be a later edition than mine). Here are some words on law (some are marked as archaic):

|habit and repute|held or regarded to be (a thief, a married person etc.) …|
|hail, whole|the whole of, the full number of: ‘the whole Heritors or their agents’.|
|hereanent|concerning this matter; in regard to what has just been said|
|heritable jurisdictions|collective term for various ancient rights formerly enjoyed by feudal proprietors of land or by holders of certain offices, entitling them to administer justice in local courts; abolished by the Heritable Jursidictions (Scotland) Act 1747|
|hing, hang|to attach, append (one’s seal to a document)|
|holograph|of a deed or letter: wholly in the handwriting of one person and, in the case of a will, signed by him …|
|homologate|ratify, confirm, approve, render valid|
|ingiver|one who hands in or lodges a document formally for registration etc. …|

(Thanks to Rainer Langenhan for the web link)

Some other language blogs have been posting interesting language-related entries that I haven’t commented on.

Michael at Translate This! refers to my entries on the Collins German Dictionary. His first job after university was as a compiler for the Collins Dictionary in Glasgow.

Robin Stocks at Carob, after recovering from the financial-statement-translating season, has had a number of useful entries and links for financial translators, starting on May 1st.

Robin had a photo in January that I meant to comment on.

What struck me, of course, was the tidiness of the flexes. I would like to emulate this, but I think that should have started with better-designed electricity fittings.

Gail at Open Brackets took up another entry of mine and wrote about quality or lack of quality and the translation market. There are some interesting comments, too, including some about lack of translation budgeting in the humanities. This topic struck me because I translate guides to churches and castles and sometimes a publisher recommends me to someone at a university. For instance, this week someone with a whole book on cathedral architecture wanted a quote. There was a grant for £5000 for translation, but the length was 140,000 words. If I had taken a German publisher’s line of 60 strokes and publisher’s price of 1 euro per line (OK, some pay half), that would have added up to 17,500 euros. A translator well up in the vocabulary of these cathedrals, and they weren’t cathedrals in Germany, might have made good progress on something like that, at the 1-euro-per-line price. But even then, the translator would not be able to translate for 70 working days without risking losing other clients.

Actually, I should probably have quoted per page, which is the usual method for books (but not for the ones I’ve done myself). Then I’d want to remind myself what the usual page rates paid by publishers are.

Here’s a quote from Gail’s entry:

‘There was a comment to a recent posting here that I found quite telling:

bq. I’m a contract writer for an insurance company and am responsible for “coordinating” the translation of said contracts. I have to confess to feeling rather frustrated when my translator comes back to me asking what we mean when we say “benefits payable on the death of the spouse will be payable to the employee’s estate if the employee is deceased and there’s no beneficiary designation.” He’s trying to understand it, for heaven’s sake. I, on the other hand, don’t want to understand it, as it just gives me a headache.
— cmb

I’m afraid my advice to cmb would be to get a new translator:the current one apparently stumped by very basic terminology.’

Gail also has a wonderful quote in the entry prior to this one. She found a description of her weblog at Force Monkeys:

bq. Its like a bunch of college professors got together and smoked pot for a week. They bring up a bunch of stuff you probably wouldnt think about. I dont recommend this if you dont have a very large vocabulary.

As already mentioned, the Collins large one-volume DE>EN EN>DE dictionary edited by Peter Terrell, originally sold in Germany as Pons Großwörterbuch für Experten und Universitäten Englisch, has two successors.

Language Hat seemed interested in a review of the new Collins-Langenscheidt dictionary (see recent entry). I can’t see myself doing a full review because I don’t use a bilingual dictionary like this much. I probably use the CD-ROM every day to jog my memory, but if I encounter a new German expression, I go to a monolingual dictionary or the Internet. And my translation problems usually relate to legal or cultural matters for which this dictionary is too small.

Still, I have a paper copy of the 1999 edition here and have now compared some of the pages of the new editions online with that.

First, the new Collins German Dictionary, known in Germany as Langenscheidt (Collins) Großwörterbuch Englisch (must remember the names). Some pages can be downloaded here. Take the lower link (Musterseiten), for the thumb index version – it gives 5 DE>EN pages and 5 EN>DE.

The 2004 dictionary and the 1999 dictionary are very similar indeed. I looked at the pages from biologisch – bisherig, and from E – echt, that is, only two pages, and only DE>EN. I looked at the layout of the EN>DE for the sidebars.

The layout is a bit nicer: markers like ADJ, PRON etc. are in capitals, white on a black background, so they strike the eye immediately. The sidebars (they exist in both language directions, but the sample pages show them only EN>DE) are now on a grey background, so they stand out nicely. The one I looked at was not new – it was in the 1999 dictionary too.

On one occasion, two entries have been separated, so that ebenerdig and ebenfalls are in separate entries, which makes more sense.

New words are Birnenfassung (light-bulb socket), Birnenwasser (pear brandy), and Eau de Toilette (eau de toilette – isn’t it toilet water?)

Words removed: eine weiche Birne haben (to be soft in the head).

Other alterations are trivial. Birgt replaces birg for those who are looking for the verb bergen and don’t know about the vowel change. Birst is added for bersten.

Under bisherig, the sentence der frühere Außenminister ist jetzt Kanzler has now become der frühere Stellvertreter ist jetzt Vorsitzender!

I did not compare the long entry on bis word for word. From length and layout it looks unchanged.

Two things struck me. One, why is Bisamratte given as muskrat (beaver)? I presume it means that Bisamratte is a muskrat but some people wrongly use the word for beaver. I can confirm the former because there are some in the Fürth Stadtpark. But I find the entry confusing.

Another interesting point is bisherig. Both dictionaries give:

wegen unserer bisherigen Arbeitsweise war das unmöglich: because of our previous way of working / because of the way we worked before that wasn’t possible
wegen unserer bisherige Arbeitsweise ist das unmöglich: because of our present way or working / because of the way we have worked up to now that isn’t possible

It’s interesting that bisherig can mean previous or present depending on context, but I’m sure they’re right. It means: running up to a particular time, and contains a tense problem.

That’s all, folks – not many changes, are there? Those with an earlier copy of the dictionary should have a good look, though, since the sidebars have not always been there and I suspect the 1999 edition had some big changes.

Now for the other one. That is Pons Großwörterbuch Englisch 2001, labelled on the cover Vollständige Neuentwicklung. If you click on praxisorientiert on that page, you will see a little bit of text.

Looking at the DE>EN example of fahren, it looks as if the dictionary is completely new. The meanings of the verb seem to be the same in number, but the examples are different. I missed er fuhr mit der Hand/einem Tuch über den Tisch: he ran his hand/a cloth over the table, but the entry is torn off and maybe that is there – they don’t show whole pages. There are some differences: Fahrensmann, a rather archaic word, is added, and peripatetic is added for fahrend.

Here’s the old entry for Fahrer:

Fahrer Fah|rer [>faùrŒ] m (-s, -), Fahrerin Fah|re|rin [-«rIn] f (-, -nen) [a] driver;
(= Chauffeur) chauffeur/chauffeuse, driver;
[b] (Sport) (inf) (= Radfahrer) cyclist;
(= Motorradfahrer) motorcyclist

The new one has: driver, motorist, motorbike ride, motorcyclist, biker, racing driver, racing cyclist, driver, chauffeur, chauffeuse.

Not all entries are longer, though. To compare this dictionary with the 1999 Collins, you would need to work with both and see if you developed a preference.

DNA-Testsätze sollen Busfahrern in Edinburgh helfen, die Passagiere zu identifizieren, die sie anspucken.

Ananova reports that more than 1,800 bus drivers in Edinburgh are to be issued with DNA kits to catch people who spit on them while they’re working.
The Scotsman’s article is dated April 21st and the kits were first issued in September 2003, since when over 25 bus passengers face assault charges.

bq. The kits include sterile swabs to pick up any trace of an offender’s DNA. The packs also contain a pair of latex gloves and an evidence collection bag.
New laws mean anyone arrested for any offence can be DNA-tested and their unique profile added to the national database. Any DNA matches can be made within a matter of seconds.

(Via follow the baldie)

This is an old amusement, translating the stations on the London Underground into German.

It says Totenschinkenhofstraße, but I can still hear Dick Lister saying ‘Tottenschinkenhofenstraße’ in 1966.

Still, there’s more to translate now.

Got this from an interesting entry on London Underground maps in Catalogue Blog (by a librarian).

Annie writes:

bq. One of my favourite pieces on display at the Tate Modern is The Great Bear by Simon Patterson, 1992. The station names have been replaced by names of kings, philiosophers, footballers, engineers and other famous people in categories delineated by the tube lines. It’s difficult to distinguish the names on the picture on the Tate web-site, but DARE Artists’ Gallery includes a close-up of the North-Central section.

I like that map too. I gave a copy to the IFA in Erlangen but it got lost in the secretaries’ office.

There are a couple of other excellent links there too.

(Click to enlarge/Anklicken, um zu vergrößern)

Am 15. April brachte Die Zeit einen Artikel über Sterben in Deutschland (Handakte WebLAWg erwähnte ihn auch).
Der Link funktioniert noch, und hier sind die Kosten.

People who get cremated in Germany have to have their ashes buried in an urn. (Does this mean there is a small hole that people throw small flowers into?)
There are local bye-laws too: in some places, tombstones of polished granite are forbidden because the mourners might see their reflections on the stone.

At the site www.postmortal.de there are various attempts to get round this, for example via the Netherlands or Switzerland.
(They use the word Kremierung– apparently archaic except in Switzerland – instead of Kremation.

One way is via Slangenburg in the Netherlands. Apparently you can have a civilized ceremony in a Netherlands cemetery. I think you can have the ashes scattered too, if you don’t want to smuggle them back into Germany (apparently frequently done).

The crematorium isn’t as elegant as the grave of Georg Kißkalt, the architect for whom the house I live in was built (see photo above).

The Guardian recently had an article on Berliners using a Czech funeral firm.

bq. Fed up with paying too much and waiting too long to bury or cremate their loved ones, Germans are taking advantage of a new funeral service – in the Czech republic.
The cross-border business has been flourishing because Berliners have grown weary of waiting up to three weeks to pay their last respects and being befuddled with the paperwork.
Instead, they have turned to an enterprising undertaker, Harmut Woite, who has bought a new crematorium in Vysocanske, 43 miles inside the Czech border.
In Berlin it would cost on average €5,000 for a standard funeral service, six times more expensive than a funeral across the border.

Incidentally, in August 2003 Germany first introduced apprenticeships for undertakers. There are some articles about the first trainees, for instance in the Stuttgarter Zeitung online.