Transblawg

Stridonium.com is an online meeting place for translators, where their words will not be Googled. It costs £50 per year to be a member, and there are qualifications. I haven't tried it yet.

In the same spirit, Stridonium.com is a private internet community for professional translators. It is a place where seasoned professionals and dedicated newcomers can meet to exchange views, to seek advice and ultimately to help further the interests of and to raise standards in the translation industry. The website is designed in such a way that all postings made by members can only be viewed within the community and lie beyond the reach of Google and other search engines.

I believe one concern of the founders was to have a site that was not swamped by offers and requests for work (I only noticed recently that the ITI has a public forum, accessible from the home page, that is so swamped).

As the site was not set up for commercial purposes, there is no formal area on the site for outsourcing work and no attempts are made to sell products or services to members.

See the site for more information. There is a mission statement there too.

Stridonium is apparently the Latin name of the town (location unknown) where St. Jerome (German Hieronymus) was born - also known as Strido Dalmatiae and Stridon.

Wikipedia, in its inimitable idiom, says:

It is possible Stridon lied either in nowadays Croatian or Slovenian teritory. Possible locations are: Sdrin, Štrigova, Zrenj (Croatia), Starod (Slovenia).

I also recently came across Watercooler, subtitled Tips, Tricks and Networking for Translators and set up by Andrew Bell. I really know nothing about this one. There is a fair amount to see on the opening page, but without joining I could not work out much about it.

These always remind me of Fats Waller (Your Feet's Too Big).

spEak You’re bRanes finds a rich field in stupid online comments, in this case on the British National Party in the recent EU elections. Here's the BBC page they quote from.

Here is some BNP and UKIP bumf I collected on my recent visit:

I was translating a guide to Würzburg cathedral when I started this blog in 2003. Last week I translated a leaflet to the Neumünsterkirche. Thus:

Day in the life of a legal translator, Tuesday 24 June 2009

8:00 Weather not promising: will put off trip to Würzburg till tomorrow. Flooding predicted in south Bavaria, rain elsewhere in Bavaria, but less towards NE (i.e. the direction of Würzburg)

9:00 After Googling various weather reports, and it's not raining in Fürth, I decide to go today rather than tomorrow (just as well, since unknown to me the ceremonial reopening of the church is on Wednesday evening)

10:45 Arrive in Würzburg and park at Congresszentrum - not my intention, but the Garmin satnav device I recently replaced my Tomtom with is a bit recalcitrant (and constantly tells me to take a 'ramp', see recent trip through the centre of Brussels). Park correctly next to a pillar (see later).

Walk towards church, with help from a passerby. Apple strudel with cream and Milchkaffee at Café Michel, who do quite a lot of strudels:

Während leckere Strudel in Würzburg rar sind, lockt das Café Michel gleich mit einer vielfältigen Auswahl: An süßen Strudeln bieten wir Ihnen die Füllungen Apfel, Schoko-Birne, Gries, Mohn, Rahm und eine saisonbedingte Füllung.
Wer es herzhaft mag, wählt zwischen Broccoli, Spinat, Kartoffel und gemischtem Gemüse.

Picked up a couple of maps at the tourist info in Falkenhaus. Popped into large Hugendubel bookshop next to the church.

11:30 The church is closed till 'summer 2009' for renovation. I knew it was being renovated, hence the translation, but I had not considered this problem. Go to some diocese office next door to enquire, they send me to the Dommuseum, lady at the Dommuseum kindly phones around for me and when her colleague turns up, takes me to the side entrance. She also gives me a copy of the booklet on the reopening and the leaflet in German, which are waiting to be distributed on Wednesday evening.

I know the church used, long ago, to be red inside as well as out. It is now completely white and gold. The organ (1952) is being tuned, it sounds like, people with cloths are cleaning the floor or with brushes adding last touches of paint, tightening screws, using electric tools plugged into sockets concealed under pews.

(There were Gothic and Romanesque churches here before, and apparently during the restoration some coloured illustrations on the walls were restored and then covered up with white, because the renovation was to restore the church to its baroque version - it was barockisiert).



There are also two people sitting there preparing themselves to give guided tours from June 25th, with a large Baedeker-type volume, probably an architectural guide to Franconia. At last I find out why the Kreuzkrypta is so called, and that the Kiliansbrunnen is a well, but not why the painting '...den Wald vor lauter Bäumen' ('...the wood for the trees') has that title, although it does seem appropriate.

12:30 I walk round the church looking at all and photographing some of the items numbered in the leaflet. Nearly all the Leuchter are candlesticks, sometimes more than one (the word Leuchter can be singular or plural), some of the Kreuze crosses and some crucifixes. The Gedenkschriften are epitaphs. At least I can use flash in the crypts (it was too dark to see if that was forbidden) and later get an impression on the computer, and here I can increase the ISO reading without worrying about the quality, although I do manage to get much better pictures from the publisher of the guide, Schnell & Steiner Verlag. The Retabel von Ben Willikens mit gegenübergestelltem nächtlichem Ausschnitt is a painting of an almost abstract entrance, in daylight, in blue tones, and the detail is not a detail of the painting itself, but a slightly altered detail in darker colours. Eventually I think I have solved everything.

13:20 off to the Residenz to do the 13:45 tour. I haven't been round for a few years. No photos, even without flash, all bags to be put in lockers, but no indication where the tour starts. Good but routine fast tour. I don't think the affordable literature available does justice to the images one might want to look at again later. Fortunately there is a very nice virtual tour online (that's the English version, but there's a German version too, of course) - it still wouldn't enlarge enough to show ceiling details, but maybe it's better in another browser).

14:45 Walked round the Hofgarten, increasingly slowly. It began to spit with rain, but I couldn't be bothered to get my umbrella and rain jacket out. Here is a picture of tourists with cameras and umbrellas:



15:45 On way to car park, found a butcher's where I got apple juice and Kasseler in a roll (some German butchers have hot selections for lunch and tables to stand and eat at).

16:20 Having located car park with great difficulty, forgot I was parked next to a pillar and had a fight with it. Car park was virtually empty, but despite this my attempts to back out misfired. Thank goodness for the ADAC.



I find this pillar deceptively oval. I started in space 227, and at the left is the car I only just managed not to damage.

17:15 Drive home.

When Tourism Queensland were narrowing down their search for an Islands Caretaker - described as the best job in the world - it made the Nürnberger Nachrichten, as a woman from Nürnberg was on the shortlist.

It was won by Ben Southall from the UK Deutsch English.

Ben's video can be seen at YouTube.

So can the video of another applicant, Osama.

1. Adorno's Minima Moralia in a translation by Dennis Redmond is online (tweeted by NOVALanguages).

2. LinkedIn wanted translators to work for it for free, basically. Some translators on Twitter (especially Matthew Bennett and Chris Irwin) took this up, and this led to an article in the New York Times. (See ProZ thread)

3. The book Jurists Uprooted: German-Speaking Emigré Lawyers in Twentieth Century Britain: German-Speaking Emigre Lawyers in Twentieth Century Britain edited by Jack Beatson and Reinhold Zimmermann appeared in 2004. At amazon, it's possible to see the table of contents. There's now a 30-page review by Vivian Grosswald Curran of the University of Pittsburgh School of Lawthat can be downloaded as a PDF file and is very informative on the contents (the book isn't cheap) (via Legal History Blog)

August 2008:



June 2009:

Professional translation with (sic) over 150 languages.

I'm trying to define the word professional. It's like in sports and prostitution, where you do it for money.

Ich bin nicht so der Übersetzer Mein Deutsch ist nicht so toll, aber wir bieten tranlsations der Dokumente, Web-Seiten und was auch immer Sie möchten. Wir bieten Ihnen über 150 Sprachen und unsere Preise sind super!

Kontaktieren Sie uns noch heute Ihr kostenloses Angebot!
search
http://thelanguagestore.blogspot.com/

No wonder his German is not perfect if he has to do 149 other languages too. There's a list of the languages at the blogspot address:

SothoNorthern, Sorbian, Songhai, Somba, Somali, Sogdien, Slovenian, Slovak, Slavic (Other) Swati (Swaziland), Siswant, Siouanlanguages, Sino-Tibetan, Sinhala, sindhi, siksika, sign language, Sidamo, shona, shan, Sesotho (S. Sotho) serer, Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, Semitic (Other) selkup, Scots, Sardinian, Sanskrit, sango, sandawe, Samoan, Sami languages, Samaritan Aramaic, Salishanlanguages, Russian, Rundi, Romany, Romanian, Romance (Other), Rhaeto-Rom (Romansch) Rarotongan, Rajasthani, Quechua, Pushto, ProvencalOld (to1500) Prakritlanguages, Portuguese, Polish, Pohnpeian, Phoenician, PersianOld (ca600-400B.C.), Persian (Farsi ), Papua-Australia (Other), the papiamento, Panjabi, Pangasinan, Pampanga, Pali, Palauan, Pahlavi, Ovambo, Ottoman Otomianlanguages, Ossetic, Osage, Oromo, Oriya, Ojibwe, nzima, nyoro, nyankole, Nyanja, nyamwezi , Nubianlanguages, Norwegian (Nynorsk) Norwegian (Bokmal), Norwegian, NorthAmerican Indian (Other), Norse, Niuean, Nilo-Saharan (Other), Nigeria, Niger-Kordofanian (Other), Newari, Nepali, Ndongo, NdebeleSouth, North Ndebele , Navajo, Nauru, Nahuatl (Aztec), Muong, Mundalanguages, Multiple languages, Mossi, Mordvinian, Mongolian, Mongo, Mon-Khmer (Other) Moldavian, mohawk, Mixtecos, minangkabau, micmac, Miao, Meo, Mende, Mbundu, Mayan languages, masai, marwari, Marshall, Mari, Marathi, Maori, the Isle of Man, Manobolanguages, Manipuri, mandingo, Maltese, Dutch, Malayalam, Malay, Malagasy, Makasar, Maithili, Magahi, Madurese, Macedonian, Luo (Kenya, Tanzania), Lunda, Luiseno, Luba-Katanga, lozi, Lithuanian, lingala, Lezghian, Luxemburgish, Latvian, Latin, Laos, Langued'Oc, lamba, lahnda, Ladino, kutenai, Kusaie, kurukh, Kurdish, kumyk, kuanyama, Kru, Kpelle, Korean, konkani, kongo, Komi, klingon, kirghiz, Kinyarwanda, Kikuyu, Khotanese, Khoisan (Other), Khmer, Khasi, Kazakh, Kayah, Kawi, Kashubian, Kashmiri, Karen, Karakalpak, kanuri, Kannada (Kanarese) kamba, Kalmyk-Oirat, Kadazan, Kachin, kabyle, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic, Javanese, Japanese, Italian, Iroquoian languages, Old Irish (to 900), the Irish Middle (900-1200), the Irish, the Iranian (Other), Inupiak, Inuktitut, interlingue, interlingua, Indonesia, Indochina, Europe (Other), Indic (Other) Iloko, Ijo, Igbo, Icelandic, Iban, I-Kiribati, Hupa, Hungarian, hmong, HiriMotu , hindi, Himachali, Hiligaynon, herero, Hebrew, Hawaiian, hausa, Haitian-Creole, Haida, gujarati, Guarani, Greenland, Greek (Ancient), Greek, Grebo, gothic, Gondi, Gilbertese, former High German (ca.750 - 1050), German Middle High (ca.1050-1500) Germanic (Other), German, Georgian, Geez, Gayo, ganda, Galician, Gaelic, Ga, Fulani, Fula, Friulian, Frisian, Old French (842 -- ca.1400), the French Middle (ca.1400-1600), French, Formosa, Fon, Flemish, Finno-Ugrian (Other), Finnish, Fijian, Farsi (Persian), the Faroe Islands, Fanti (Fante ), Fang, Fanagalo, ewondo, Ewe, Estonian, Esperanto, Eskimo (Other), Old English (ca.450 - 1100), English Middle (ca.1100-1500), English, Elamite, ekajuk, Egyptian (ancient) Efik, dzongkha, Dyula, Dutch Middle (ca.1050-1350), Dutch, Duala, Dravidian (Other) dogri, Divehi, dinka, Dida, Delaware, dayak, Dari, Danish, Damara, Dakota, Czech, Cushitic (Other ), Croatian, Creoles and Pidgins (Portuguese-based Other) Creoles and Pidgins (Other) Creoles and Pidgins (French-based Other) Creoles and Pidgins (English-based Other), Creek, Cree, Corsican, Cornish, Coptic, the Cook Islands Maori, Chuvash, Chuukese, Church Slavic, Choctaw, Chinookjargon, Chinese, Chin, chibcha, Cheyenne, Cherokee, Chechen, Chamorro, Cham, Chagatai, Central American Indian (Other), Celtic (Other) Cebuano (Bisayan), Caucasian (Other), the Catalan, the Caribbean, Caddo, Myanmar, Buriat, Bulgarian, Bugie, Breton, Braj, Brahui, Bosnian, bislama, Bini, Bikol, Bihari, Bhojpuri (& Tharu) , Berber (Other), Bengali, Bemba, Belarusian, Beja, the Basque, bashkir, Basa, Bantu (Other), banda, Bamileke languages, bambara, baluchi, Baltic (Other), Balinese, Azerbaijan, Aymara, Awadhi, Avestan , Avar, Austronesian (Other), Athapascan languages, Asturian, Assamese, Artificial (Other), Armenian, Arawak, Araucanian, arapaho, Aramaic, Arabic, Apache languages, ancient Hebrew, Amharic, Altaic (Other), Algonquian languages, Aleut, Albanian, Akkadian, Akan, Afro-Asiatic (Other), the afrikaans, afrihili, Afar, adangme, acoli, achinese, Abkhazian, South American Indian (Other), Spanish, sukuma, Sumerian, Sundanese, Susu, Swahili, Swedish, Sylheti , Syriac, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tamang Tamashek, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Tereno, Tetum, Thai, Tibetan, Tigre, Tigrinya, Time Tivi, Tlingit, Tonga (Nya) Tonga (TongaIslands), Truk, Tsimshian , Tsonga, Tswana, tumbuka, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Tuvinian, Twi, Ugaritic, Uighur, Ukrainian, Ulithi, Umbundu, Urdu, Uzbek Vai Valencia, Venda, Vietnamese, Volapk, Votic, Wakashanlanguages, Walamo, waray, washo , Welsh, Woleai, Wolof, Xhosa, Yakut, Yao, Yapese, Yi, yiddish, yoruba, Zapotec, Zenaga, Zhuang (Chuang) Zulu, Zuni

The most beautiful view of the city can be had from the Festung Marienberg (fortress). From the 15th-century Old Main Bridge, with its statues of the Franconian apostles of Lilian, Totnan and Kolonat, the Romanesque Cathedral dominates the view.

Found here.

I was actually wondering whether it was OK in English to refer to Kilian, Kolonat and Totnan as the Franconian apostles. Apparently it is, although this site would not persuade me.

This expression I encountered in La fille de la ville:

A few days ago, Flojindamesa over at Eat Drink Nola posted about Baru, a Caribbean/Tapas restaurant on Magazine Street. Of course after reading her post, Baader-Meinhof Syndrome set in and I saw Baru mentioned everywhere!

The meaning is obvious from the context; Wikipedia has more:

The "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" was coined by a reader of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Terry Mullen. The Minnesota newspaper runs a daily column called "Bulletin Board," for which readers, using pseudonyms (in this case it was 'Gigetto on Lincoln'), submit humorous or interesting anecdotes. The term was coined when Mullen submitted a story around 1986,[1] about how he first heard about the terrorist group known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang and then heard about it again a short while later from a different source.

What term do Germans use for this phenomenon? After all, Baader-Meinhof is scarcely trivial information over here.

This is a mysterious ad from the current version of the booklet announcing the BDÜ September translation conference in Berlin:



Weird. This is the best I can do for the most common pronunciation:
sım baı 'ǝʊs ıs

The o sound in the third syllable is a bit different in the US. The second syllable suggestion is less common than mine, and the schwa in the last syllable is recorded as non-RP British in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.

Mind you, their use of an o indicates they are not using the IPA. I am open to correction!

The shops in England are full of displays for Father's Day.

The Independent, in Fritzl: a perfect gift for Father's Day, say Tesco and WH Smith, reports that some retailers had the book The Crimes of Josef Fritzl in their Father's Day displays:

But to some branches of Tesco and W H Smith, The Crimes of Josef Fritzl: Uncovering the Truth seemed a surefire hit for the Dad market. The book, which details how the Austrian, now 74, imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth in his cellar for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering her seven children, has featured as a Father's Day promotion.

One amazon reviewer writes:

And that's the terrifying part, you really start to understand the dysfunctional family dynamics. Dynamics that started way before Elizabeth, that were born out of the atrocities of Nazi Austria and his horrifying one-eyed mother. This is a really great read.

One Tesco shop apparently had to think twice before removing the book from the display.

This basilica is not usually part of the route from Upminster to Fürth, at least not since the Brussels orbital motorway was built. It's a good idea to try the detour in afternoon rush-hour, so there's time to take a photo. Photos of the King Leopold II tunnel and various immigrant grocery shops are unfortunately missing.



Here is the last food before the Eurotunnel (Folkestone side):



and here the view approaching the tunnel on the Calais side:

High Court decision on the right to anonymity of a blogging police officer (relating to an application for an interim injunction). The blog - Nightjack - has been deleted by the authors.

The case is about whether a blogger (policeman or journalist) has the right to preserve his or her anonymity if someone finds out the blogger's identity. It was Mr Justice Eady who made the decision in favour of privacy on Max Mosley.

What seems wrong to me is not so much the decision as the conduct of Patrick Foster, the journalist who outed the blogger. Charon QC links to two rather negative entries on him, which suggest he specializes in unmasking identities.

Neutral Citation Number: [2009] EWHC 1358 (QB)
Case No: HQ09X02293

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
16 June 2009

B e f o r e :

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE EADY
__________________
Between:
THE AUTHOR OF A BLOG

Claimant
- and -


TIMES NEWSPAPERS LIMITED
Defendant

__________________

Hugh Tomlinson QC (instructed by Olswang) for the Claimant
Antony White QC and Jonathan Barnes (instructed by Times Newspapers Ltd) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 4 June 2009
__________________

Mr Tomlinson submitted that the thousands of regular bloggers who communicate nowadays via the Internet, under a cloak of anonymity, would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them. That may be true. I suspect that some would be very concerned and others less so. Be that as it may, Mr Tomlinson needs to demonstrate that there would be a legally enforceable right to maintain anonymity, in the absence of a genuine breach of confidence, by suppressing the fruits of detective work such as that carried out by Mr Foster.

It's a problem for translation blogs too, of course. I don't intend to attempt to unmask the Masked Translator - not that that blog goes out of its way to anonymously chastise real translation companies - but most translation blogs are cheery and positive, for good reason: potential clients might prefer that - and it's refreshing to read something different. Then again, it would be unprofessional to publish traceable information about one's translation work, except where and when that work is published.

The police blogger has been given a warning and will not be further punished:

A spokeswoman for Lancashire Constabulary said that Det Con Horton, who is understood to be an officer with the force's Eastern and Pennine divisions, had been spoken to and received a written warning but would not be disciplined further "unless anything else was to come out".

She added: "We have conducted a full internal investigation and the officer accepts that parts of his public commentary have fallen short of the standards of professional behaviour we expect of our police officers."

Meanwhile, The Independent reports on the unmasking of a pro-life blogger whose blog about being pregnant with a terminally ill baby was invented.

LATER NOTE: See Head of Legal on NightJack: the Times should be ashamed


Article by the legal editor of The Times, Frances Gibb - with photo of the blogger, now permitted.

Article by Patrick Foster himself with details of blog entries that could be traced to real cases.

Blog entry from Pupillage and How to Get it.

Possibly the oldest wooden church in the world - insofar as it still is a wooden church. Or maybe not quite so old, depending on your dendrochronological view.