A report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, ‘sagen, sug, gesugen’, describes a society for the promotion of strong verbs in German (Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben). Strong (irregular) verb forms are being avoided, so in a kind of affirmative action, this society is trying to make more weak verbs strong. Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben (and they do more, see the heading Rettet des Genitivs!).

It reminds me of Matthias Koeppel’s poems in what he calls Starckdeutsch. I haven’t got the book here, but I found two on the Web (originals and translations here):

Arrckiteikturr
Arr, di Arr; di Arrckitucktn –
jarr, di sünd tautul pfarrucktn.
Pauhn onz euburoll Quaduren,
vo se gurrtücht henngehuren.
Vn demm Hurz büsz ze denn Ullpn
snd di Häusur steitz di sullpn.
Duch di Arrckitucktn tschumpfn:
Onzre Pauhörrn snd di Tumpfn!
Olle zullte mon kastruren,
düßße auff ze pauhin huren;
odur stott ünn rachtn Winkuln
se dönn pauhin, wi se pinkuln.

I wondered if Koeppel was still in print, and I found that the site I just quoted misspells starckdeutsch and matthias, so I hope it spelt the poem right! For instance, I suspect gurrtücht should be gurrnücht… It may be possible to get second-hand copies of Starckdeutsch and Starckdeutsch II, or Koeppels Tierleben. In Starckdeutsch.

But there is a CD available.

The Shifted Librarian gives a link to Doonesbury’s Daily Dose strip. The topic on Sunday August 10th was blogger’s block.

This second case on a translator’s invoice is earlier. It was decided by the Oberlandesgericht Hamm (Higher Regional Court of Appeal in the civil and criminal court system)
The translation was from Spanish to German. 145 pages of transcripts of phone conversations in Spanish had to be translated for a criminal case under the Narcotics Act (Betäubungsmittelgesetz). The appeal court conceded the translator the DM 3.20 per line that the translator wanted, but again it insisted that spaces could not be included in the count. Not only was the translation urgent, but the deadline was reduced by 14 days after the translator had started working.

The ZSEG statute does not speak of remuneration for translators, but compensation (Entschädigung) for time spent. The translator was actually promised DM 3.20 per line by the Dortmund public prosecutor’s office, but the court held that such an agreement is not binding. When the translator submitted his invoice, he was at first offered only DM 2.50, which was the lowest permitted line rate plus 25% for urgency.

It is interesting, as in the last case, to read why the court thought the translation was particularly difficult and therefore accepted the translator’s higher line price. It said that the conversations were not in ‘European’, ‘easy/Castilian’ Spanish, but in Latin-American Spanish. ‘This Spanish is harder to translate, according to the applicant [the translator], and the court has no reason to doubt this’. Spanish is actually classed by the guidelines for compensating interpreters and translators as an easy language (Group A).

(Of course, many languages are equally ‘easy’ for those who speak them). Continue reading →

Two German court decisions on the Internet about translators’ charges. These are based on charges to the court itself, where the court instructed the translator and the statute ZuSEG applies.

The most recent was a decision in May 2002 by the Landesarbeitsgericht Baden-Württemberg (the court of second instance in labour law). file number is 4 Ta 18/02. The translation was of some pleadings to be served on the defendant in Portugal. The translator was successful on most points.,
One point was the rate per line. The court found a line rate higher than the minimum justified for a number of reasons: the text contained a number of legal terms of art, and the translator, ‘who is not a lawyer’, therefore has to produce a translation of a particular quality.

(But what does it matter if the translator is a lawyer or not? He or she shouldn’t be doing these translations without legal knowledge; and in addition, who says a lawyer can translate a legal text into Portuguese particularly well? – However, it’s true that to become a sworn translator you don’t have to take law as a special subject).) Continue reading →

Telepolis, magazin der netzkultur, reports on how Chinese communicate with each other in online chat rooms: Du bist ein 286 (You are a 286) by Weigui Fang. (Thanks to Ingmar Greil).

Here’s an example (my translation follows):

bq. Gestern abend kam mein GG [gege: Bruder] mit seinem GF [girl friend] zu uns zum Abendessen. Wie GG und GF bei Tisch meiner Mutter PMP [pai mapi: schmeichelten], war wirklich sehr BT [biantai: abnormal]. 7456 [Es hat mich wirklich geärgert]. Ich hab nur sehr wenig gegessen und sagte 886 [Tschüß] zu ihnen. Dann ging ich ins Internet, um mit meiner MM [meimei: Freundin/kleinen Schwester] zu chatten

bq. Yesterday evening my brother [gege: brother] and his GF [girl friend] came to have dinner with us. It was really quite BT [biantai: abnormal], the way GG and GF PMP [pai mapi: flattered] my mother at table. 7456 [It really annoyed me]. I ate very little and said 886 [Bye] to them. Then I went into the Internet to chat with my MM [meimei: girl friend / little sister.]

About 2000 new words have been invented for the Internet. If you use any method for entering characters onscreen, you will be entering pinyin or code, and you are offered a list of sets of characters to choose from. Internet chat will take, say, the second word from this list, even if it means ‘prawn’, to mean something completely different, because it’s easy to enter and they don’t expect to be needing the word ‘prawn’ in their conversation. Numbers are also used (see the example) where they sound something like the word intended.

Here’s an article on the subject in English.

bq. One of the most common Chinese Internet shorthands is 88, which reads “ba ba” in Chinese and has come to mean “bye bye”.
“If you’re in an Internet cafe and have to rush to class, it’s easier to type 88 than ‘bye’ or ‘zai jian’ (the Chinese word for goodbye),” said Zhou Xizhou, a native of Hunan Province.