I just discovered Messagease, a superior system for entering text on a Palm device (freeware). It’s intuitive, that’s to say, it works although I haven’t read the instructions yet.

The system is a grid as for noughts and crosses, containing these letters:
A N I
H O R
T E S
123 space

These are the most frequently used letters and you tap the square to enter them. For other letters, you stroke the square outwards: for instance, around the O are smaller letters:
q u p
c O b
g d j

On the 123 square you can switch to a numbers keypad.

You have to copy the text into memory and paste into another application.

I discovered this in the comments on Philip Greenspun’s weblog, where he reports his Handspring Treo has died and wonders whether to get a Pocket PC. The comments are worth reading. I suspect the best advice comes from those who advise ‘neither’. I don’t use a PDA much, but it’s very useful if I am away for a while.

The program was recommended by Ted Marcus. Continue reading →

The film ‘Good Bye Lenin’ (the space in ‘Good Bye’ must be the German spelling) opened in the UK on July 25th and there is a review in The Observer. Has it been dubbed or subtitled? There must have been a fair number of cultural references there. I remember that after awaking from her coma, the mother continues to compose complaints about ill-fitting mail-order clothes, but now they go to Otto Versand (unknown to her, since she believes the GDR still exists).

I enjoyed the film more than I thought I would. East Germany offers a lot of visual interest and makes me homesick for England in the 1950s. (I don’t think Sonnenallee was distributed for English-speaking audiences but there are clips at its website – the sort of site where you press Skip Intro and get the impression you didn’t skip it). My favourite part was the story that so many West Germans had grown tired of their consumerism and meaningless lives that they begged to be allowed into East Germany.

Some basic notes as background to anything I record later (for instance, further notes on Austrian courts).

What is the purpose of the translation?
Who is going to read it?

1. If it’s just a newspaper article, the name of the German court may be irrelevant.
e.g. BBC News on Ryanair:

bq. A German court has ruled that the budget airline Ryanair cannot use the word “Duesseldorf” for an airport 70 kilometres (42 miles) from the city.
The court in Cologne said that Ryanair’s term “Niederrhein (Duesseldorf)” was deceptive advertising because the airport was too far from the city.

(It was a Landgericht, a court of first instance dealing with more serious matters).

But if the court is of any significance whatever, the German name should be quoted at least once.

(For further tactics, read on) Continue reading →

I haven’t finished with the Austrian courts or with the topic of translating courts, but they are rather big and rather difficult to blog.
I have found another treatment of the Austrian courts in English, though, in a Council of Europe book called Judicial Organisation in Europe, ISBN 92 871 4244 0, dated 2000, which apparently cost £19.95.
The Council of Europe (Europarat) is of course not to be confused with the EU European Council (Europäischer Rat). The COE has 45 member states – a map on the website makes it easier to envisage – and 33 judicial systems are described in the book.

Emil Wiedemann from the Hardenberg Gymnasium (secondary school a bit like a British grammar school) in Fürth is one of the seven school-leavers in Bavaria chosen to live free of charge in the Maximilianeum building in Munich while they study at university there. (Article from the Fürther Nachrichten in German).

His father is a Protestant clergyman and his mother an interpreter for German and English; he doesn’t think he inherited his brains from them, according to the paper (!). Three other Franconians, from Erlangen, Nuremberg and Bamberg, have also been chosen. They are among the 400 students who attained a mark of 1.0 in the Abitur, the university-entrance exam. They also passed another test and were tested orally. Emil was asked inter alia about texts by Wolfdietrich Schnurre, the Ottoman empire, and Turkey’s application to join the EU. Applicants have to show social competence (perhaps not their ability to eat Leberkäse, a Bavarian speciality they ate after the test, and they have to have perfect manners and be Christians (which excludes quite a number of present students in Bavaria – but the Stiftung Maximilianeum foundation was created by King Maximilian II in 1852 to help all students without regard to their financial means, and quite possibly the students were required to be Christians).
At the Maximilianeum, the students each have a room, use of a library, a music room with two grand pianos, a computer room and a basement room for parties (German Partykeller – German houses usually have large basements.
Here are pictures of the present scholarship holders.
Famous earlier scholarship holders are Werner Heisenberg, Franz Josef Strauß and Carl Amery.

Steve has just finished his first year of law school at Stanford University, so this link is not totally off topic. It shows how to take aerial photos from a helium-filled party balloon plus some hardware (cost about $50). Photos are of the campus. Via Slashdot.