I live over an electrician’s and last Saturday, knowing I was a translator, they asked me if I could translate

a short text of instructions for a small electronic alarm clock. I don’t do technical translations and I don’t translate into German, but this was an exception, and I could ask Germans to help if I wasn’t sure of the right technical turn of phrase. I was fearing the worst, so I asked to have the clock. Indeed, I needed the clock to understand the instructions rather than vice versa.

Here is the clock:

You keep pressing the SET button to move from mode to mode (set alarm, change time, change alarm etc.) To make changes within a mode, you press MODE.
The little bell at the bottom of the screen means CHIME, which means it will bleep only once; without the chime set, it will keep bleeping.

Here is the text:

Instruction manual for lcd alarm clock
1. General Setting
“set” button for alarm set, date set, time set.
“mode” button for alarm time, date & seconds display, advance
Press “set” several times until desired mode display.
Press “mode” to advance setting.
2. Setting alarm & chime on/off
At normal display, press “set” and release to display alarm time.
Press “mode” once to turn on alarm.
Press “mode” again and release to turn on chime also.
Press “mode” again and release to turn off alarm.
Press “mode” again and release to turn off chime also.

My version:

Bedienungsanleitung für LCD-Wecker
1. Einstellung allgemein
SET-Taste (Einstellen) stellt Wecksignal, Datum und Uhrzeit ein.
MODE-Taste (Modus) zeigt Weckzeit, Datum- und Sekundenanzeige, dient zum Weiterschalten
SET mehrmals drücken bis gewünschter Modus angezeigt wird.
Drücken Sie MODE, um weiterzuschalten
2. Weckton und Weckklang ein/aus
Bei normaler Anzeige, SET drücken und loslassen, um Weckzeit anzuzeigen.
MODE einmal drücken, um Wecksignal einzuschalten.
MODE nochmals drücken und loslassen, um auch Klang einzuschalten.
MODE nochmals drücken und loslassen, um Wecksignal auszuschalten.
MODE nochmals drücken und loslassen, um auch Klang auszuschalten.

Conclusion: Most original texts are a mess. Technical translators have to know how things work.

I also prepared this summary, which looking back on it is just as useless as the original. Had I had more time, I would have added small diagrams:

Allgemein
PM = nach Mittag
AL = Wecker („alarm“)

SET drücken, um von Modus zu Modus zu springen.
MODE drücken, um innerhalb eines Modus Änderungen vorzunehmenl

1. Nach Einschieben der Batterie: Zeit wird angezeigt.
z.B. 1:05 (Doppelpunkt blinkt)
MODE drücken: Weckzeit wird angezeigt
z.B. 7:30 (mit AL im Zentrum)
Weckzeit wird nur kurz angezeigt, dann wird wieder die Zeit angezeigt.

2. Einmal SET drücken.
Weckzeit erscheint, jetzt blinkend
MODE einmal oder mehrmals drücken: schaltet zwischen an ((()))
oder an mit „Weckton“ („chime“)

3. Nochmal SET drücken.
Weckzeit Stunden einstellen:
1: A (1 blinkt) (1:A = 1 morgens; 1:P = 1 nachmittags)

4. SET drücken.
Weckzeit Minuten einstellen:
:02 (blinkt)

5. SET drücken.
Monat einstellen

6. SET drücken.
Tag einstellen.

7. SET drücken
Stunden einstellen

8. SET drücken
Minuten einstellen

9. SET drücken
Zurück zum Anfang – Zeit wird angezeigt

Quiz auf Englisch mit merkwürdigen Ergebnissen. Sicher trifft es teilweise zu, aber das mit den Autoaufklebern…?

You’re China!
Big and powerful, you have a long history behind you with more good and bad than you care to remember, or are really capable of remembering.  Lately, in older age, you’ve gotten sort of crochety and even mean-spirited.  There is still a lot that’s beautiful about you, but most of the focus people have when they think about you is how hard it is to work with you.  There’s hope that you might start opening up to
people, but lots of people have bumper stickers about how much you should
change.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

What a nasty quiz – nasty about China, I mean. I wonder what country it comes from?!

The cumulative results page says most people are the United Nations, and I must admit I was the UN the first time round, but I was aware I had answered the first question wrong. When I did it again, I got completely different questions (‘Are you more often angry than sad?’)
(Via Lifechanges…delayed)

On the legaltranslators mailing list at www.yahoogroups.com, the site www.tradulex.org was mentioned for a set of articles on legal translation from Hieronymus, the journal of the Swiss translators’ association ASTTI (thanks, Jacek!). The ASTTI site has German, French and Italian, but the English and Rumantsch links don’t work (yet). There are links to the articles here too, but they aren’t working at the moment either.

I actually had this Hieronymus, because I subscribed for a year. I think I had to put some Swiss notes in an envelope eventually, because they gave no bank account, only a post office account for payment. The journla is in German, French, Italian and some English.

At the moment, the tradulex site (which has other materials for translators on it) is not behaving well, so I won’t quote. There is a long article by Barbara J. Beveridge: ‘Legal English – How it developed and why it is not appropriate for International Commercial Contracts’ that contains a lot of useful minutiae. And there is an article in German by Suzanne Ballansat-Aebi on prepositions in English legal texts.

Artikel, mehrsprachig, zu juristische Übersetzung aus Hieronymus, der Zeitschrift der schweizerischen Übersetzervereinigung.

Ein Artikel von Suzanne Ballansat-Aebi auf Deutsch über Präpositionen in englischen Rechtstexten könnte interessant sein.

I know I’m not the only person of my name (as I’ve mentioned before, and see below). Now another one: a publisher is looking for a Margaret Marks who translated a song from the Polish. The song is to be reprinted and it’s a question of translator’s copyright.

Here is the ditty:
(English words by Margaret Marks, printed in a 1981 Silver Burdett music textbook)

bq. “Who’s been eating up my corn?”
Cried the farmer one fine morn;
Saw a rabbit, tried to grab it,
But the critter got away!
Etc.

Incidentally, there is a version on the Web with slightly different words, but that isn’t the one.

I had to confess that this is a bit too American for my usual style (apart from the fact that I don’t speak Polish).

Anyone know this person?

There was a Margaret Marks who was a barkeeper in Nevada and died in 1998.

bq. One of the best known saloons that Virginia City ever produced was the Crystal Bar. It was established and operated by Con Ahern until the very early part of the nineteenth century. It was then sold to his friend and employee, William Marks, Sr.. Marks began a family legacy with the bar that lasted until the late 1990’s.

bq. The “Mystery Clock” was installed by the Marks family and has remained a focal point of interest to the tourists. The secret of the “Mystery” clock passed on with Margaret Marks, Bill’s wife, when she died in 1998.

They don’t explain why it is a mystery. Perhaps no-one now knows it’s a mystery, and that is the mystery. MM was famous for her mint julep.

People in my family have run pubs, but I don’t think there’s a connection.

There is another Margaret Marks in Nevada who is involved in local politics or something.

language hat reports that the New York Times had an article on this on March 4th (see earlier entry). (That NYT link should be a keeper)

The article went a bit further. It consulted Brian Garner

bq. Bryan A. Garner, the editor of Black’s Law Dictionary and the president of LawProse, a legal-writing consulting firm, said courts are becoming increasingly impatient with many lawyers’ substandard writing skills.
“Lawyers are the most highly paid professional writers in the world,” he said. “It’s a good thing for judges to be more demanding.”

and it found another story. A Utah appeals court, on the same day as the Hart decision mentioned above, criticized a lawyer for ‘shouting’.

bq. “While I appreciate a zealous advocate as much as anyone, such techniques, which really amount to a written form of shouting, are simply inappropriate in an appellate brief,” Judge Orme continued. “It is counterproductive for counsel to litter his brief with burdensome material such as “WRONG! WRONG ANALYSIS! WRONG RESULT! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”

Trevor on Kaleboel has been reading Ghana Web and discovers a guest saying that English common law requires a man to make his spouse enjoy the act of sex.

I don’t seem to recall this coming up at the College of Law.

More on law in Ghana.