Transblawg

26. Dezember 2010 —I am now in the UK, after Lufthansa eventually booked me onto Air Berlin. A young woman architect disappeared in Bristol on December 17th and it sounds as if her body has now been found. She had been out with colleagues, then bought a pizza at Tesco on the way home, but no trace of the pizza was fou…

»

25. Dezember 2010 —I've been racking my brains but can't think of an example. In any case, from love to hate seems a bit too big a step. I can think of books that have lost their appeal. I once thought James Fenton's poems, such as The Memory of War, poems about Germany and Vietnam, very impressive, but the magic seem…

18. Dezember 2010 —Local press in Nuremberg station bookshop. Many of these have mainly the same content. An advert by the German lawyers' society in Nuremberg Station: Fürth Christmas tree This morning with real snow on it for once. To the left, the refurbished building that was the earliest department store in Bavar…

»

18. Dezember 2010 —This is rubbish - haven't I already done this? Anything by Thomas Bernhard or Kazuo Ishiguro, perhaps (not sure if I have any one favourite author, though).…

17. Dezember 2010 —When I was browsing the legal weblog Law and the Multiverse – Superheroes, supervillains, and the law recently, I was thinking about the presumption of death, usually after seven years (see entry I'm not dead yet). I discovered that the German statute governing this is the Verschollenheitsgesetz, pa…

»

16. Dezember 2010 —Boing Boing shows some artists' drawings of Julian Assange today and comments on how odd they are. Another commenter beat me to it: British courtroom artists are not allowed to draw when they are in the courtroom - they have to do it by memory afterwards. The commenter links to Courtroom Sketches o…

»

16. Dezember 2010 —Freelance Mag - a freelance magazine for translators, starting in January - but you can get the first edition free as a PDF file now. Via Riccardo in About Translation…

14. Dezember 2010 —Of course I have no memory of this. I went to a kind of school and learnt to read when I was four, but all I can remember is the height of the steps I had to climb up to get to my seat - we were on a little platform, and I think the top of the three steps was level with my head. And my mother didn't…

»

14. Dezember 2010 —Brunelleschi's Dome, by Ross King, reminds me of Florence Cathedral. However, this isn't very surprising, is it? I read most of the book and skimmed the rest when I was translating some guides from German to English and trying to work out the construction. I would be hard put to it to describe the c…

14. Dezember 2010 —Via someone who arrived at Transblawg, I found a link to a reader's letter on the Telegraph, from Sir Cyril Taylor, who apparently played a role in Tony Blair's creation of schools called academies. I am still trying to work out what this letter means. It seems to refer to the fact that the UK intro…

»

10. Dezember 2010 — Actually, I am quite annoyed with DHL. I know the weather's bad, but I paid extra for quick delivery and they seem to have abandoned the container in mid-afternoon. But they aren't as bad as Little Moo. Must remember never to order Christmas cards there again later than October. You can see the fou…

10. Dezember 2010 —I'm never completely up to date with what Swiss and Austrian sources are available online. I do have a couple of translation of the Swiss Civil Code and the first volume of the Swiss Code of Obligations in English, but I need the later parts. And sure enough, it's online now. Start looking at http:/…

»

9. Dezember 2010 —Another difficult one. I remember I had a lot of cookery books bought in the 1960s, for instance Elizabeth David on French Provincial Cooking, French Country Cooking and Italian Food. Another was The Joy of Cooking. They remind me of my mother because she gave me a cookery book club membership for m…

»

8. Dezember 2010 —By Theodor Fontane, via Wikisource. Philip Oltermann on the London Review of Books blog put me onto this. More background there, including a link to Nina Hagen singing the poem on YouTube. I can't agree that 'Fontane is uncool', though. Another English version here. Those who should hear, they hea…

»

8. Dezember 2010 —Google operator AROUND Lifehacker sets out how to use the undocumented Google search operator AROUND. Just on a cursory examination, I did three searches: state AROUND (1) witness state witness "state witness" The second two both had examples of state's witness, but the first didn't. However, changi…

»

6. Dezember 2010 —There's been a discussion of the (Mexican) Spanish term fojas utiles. Two points came up here: firstly, these may be 'sheets with valid text' - at least, the other sheets are either blank or crossed out (inutilizadas). Short lines may be used to fill up a 'blank' page so nothing can be entered there…

»

5. Dezember 2010 —I remember making fun of Lidl's British Week in Germany, but can't remember actually making a recommendation. Still, I seem to have put someone's back up: Englaender sind ja bekannt, dass diese weder kochen koennen , noch von kueche etwas verstehen. Alles fuer den SCHWEINETROG Haette ich wisse…

»

4. Dezember 2010 —1914-1918 war memorial, Stadtpark The name of the rose - rose garden, Stadtpark Unfortunately I had no bird food with me Please don't touch …

1. Dezember 2010 — Currywurst is not really a Franconian thing, but you can get Nürnberger here too. Snowing too much to take many pictures. The town hall now has energy-saving light bulbs. …

1. Dezember 2010 —This is ridiculous. I already said some books I could read again, so the rest are the ones I won't read again. The most likely category are potboiler crime novels, which I have read a lot of but not recently. And I don't have too many of them left on my shelves. I have been known to read Ruth Rendel…

»

1. Dezember 2010 —The EPO announced on November 30 that it is going to collaborate with Google: The EPO and Google have today signed a Memorandum of Understanding to improve access to patent translations in multiple languages. Under the agreement, the EPO will use Google's machine translation technology to transl…

»

27. November 2010 —This first of Advent, which people keep wishing me a happy one of, seems to be a big deal. And here are two jackdaws on the Stadttheater. …

26. November 2010 —Palm tree near Nuremberg: A German shopping centre with bottle banks: All taken this morning. Nasty raw cold weather. …

26. November 2010 —I suppose there are some novels I could read again and again. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, some of Kleist's stories such as Michael Kohlhaas, Die Verlobung in Santo Domingo, Das Erdbeben in Chili, maybe War and Peace (I've only read it twice, though), some Ishiguro, the Thomas …

»

23. November 2010 —I recently received a copy of an article from Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, Vertragssprache und Sprache des anwendbaren Rechts, by Rechtsanwalt Dr. Dr. h.c. Georg Maier-Reimer, the co-publisher. This was based on a talk given by the author at the Anwaltstag in May. There are two statements in this…

»