Dawid Wiskott usually translates into Hebrew and German. One day someone needed a translation of a two-page contract from Aramaic into English. It turned out to be a Hebrew witch’s spell.

NOTE ADDED LATER: (these instructions are from Dawid, not me, and possibly apply only to Netscape): if you look at Dawid’s page (some of this and all the rest of the site are in Hebrew), select View-encoding-hebrew (Windows). Netscape will accept only U.S. ascii as default. You can choose between good Hebrew and mucked-up English or vice versa (left-to-right / right-to-left problem).

Vielleicht könntest du die Leser warnen, dass sie nach aufrufen der seite View-encoding-hebrew(windows) waehlen muessen. netscape setzt sich ueber jeden versuch hinweg, einen anderen default als amerikanisches ascii aufzuladen.
ausserdem habe ich festgestellt, dass der betrachter die wahl hat zwischen ordentlichem hebraeisch mit vermurkstem englisch (right to left) und ordentlichem englisch mit vermurkstem hebraeisch (left to right).

This might interest technical translators. From Boing Boing, Darren Barefoot has a Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness (but surely the meaning of the Chinese one is obvious? The shoes are made of leather, cloth and rhomboids).

Via How Appealing, The Smoking Gun presents the Legal Document of the Year for 2003 (they couldn’t wait till December):

bq. The winner is not for the faint of heart, because in it the Colorado State Public Defender’s office provides what possibly may be the most comprehensive history of the “F-word” one could ever hope to find.

I particularly enjoyed the table contrasting the frequency of two forms of the F-word with that of other common expressions such as Mom, apple pie, freedom of speech, baseball, hot dogs and Chevrolet (well, in Britain we do sometimes talk about apple pie).

I have used the Smoking Gun archive before. It has rather extreme cases, as scans, showing the original layout, signatures and certificates of service.

Howard Bashman’s How Appealing blog has a monthly interview (twenty questions) with an appellate judge, as Denise Howell reminded us yesterday.

According to an article from BBC News, losing email is worse than divorce:

bq. A week without e-mail is more traumatic than moving house or getting divorced, say techies.
The findings come in a survey of information technology managers for the software storage firm Veritas which looked at how businesses have become dependent on e-mail.

You can become a ‘zertifizierter Übersetzer’ (certified translator, literally – although in BE that sounds as if you were ready to go to a lunatic asylum) – see the item on E-Bay.

The firm appears to have been on ebay for a while. It claims to certify knowledge you already have. It says you train and do a final exam and then you get a certificate. The title can legally be used in Germany. The company was founded in the UK, but of course EU law permits that, no matter whether the object was to save money. But maybe the company does have a lot of English-language operations and I just haven’t found them.

On a cursory search I failed to find an English version.

More activities here (German).

Thanks to Robin Stocks, translator, who is in Bonn and also does a home page for the Bonner Übersetzer- und Dolmetscherforum (German, database of translators and interpreters), and Christiane Sprinz, food technologist and translator.

On the firm’s personal page at E-Bay (registration probably necessary), it says you don’t need to do any training if you confirm by email that you have the necessary experience.

bq. Frage: Ich habe ausreichend Fachwissen muß ich trotzdem an der Schulung teilnehmen?

bq. Antwort: Nein, sofern Sie uns Ihr Fachwissen per Email bestätigen (z.B. “Ich …. bestätige hiermit das ich über genügend Fachwissen in dem zu zertifizierenden Bereich verfüge”).

Via Isabella Massardo, an article from the Sydney Morning Herald about the way Australian English resists U.S. influence, No fries with that, mate.

There’s a link to ABC Online’s Australian Word Map, which shows regional Australian expressions and indicates their spread on a map, with ten words of the month.

bq. A recent inclusion is “blue-tongue”, for small children (because toddlers are close to the ground, like blue-tongue lizards). That one comes from Tasmania. The Brisbane region contributes “desert chicken”, meaning corned beef. From the central coast of Queensland comes “muckadilla”, meaning a disorganised person. From the Sydney region comes the expression “YMCA dinner”, or leftovers (“Yesterday’s Muck Cooked Again”). And, when someone agrees to take part in an activity, they say they’re “thumbs in”.

Old Bush Vernacular will be used in The Aussie Bible, to be published in August (there is already a Cockney Bible).