Software for less plain English
am 20.08.2004 von TransblawgThe program WhiteSmoke will ‘enrich’ your English. The demo on the site shows how you can start with a simple sentence like ‘I admire your work’ and finish …
Academic EFL / Denglisch für Akademiker
Transblawg / Spiegel Online has an article by Pascal Fischer headed Sprache der Wissenschaft: Say it in broken English. This deals with the curious phenomenon that in many German universities, Germans have to submit work in English, to be marked by other Germans.…
Hearing French and transcribing it in English
Transblawg / Joi Ito shows a photo of a screen showing the output from steno machines. However, the ‘scribes’ are said to be hearing French and typing English - just what many clients think translators do when they work! But in the...…
Perlentaucher.de goes English
Transblawg / Signandsight, Perlentaucher’s English site went online on March 1. It is subtitled ‘Arts, Essays, Ideas from Germany’. Perlentaucher.de is a site that collects, summarizes and links to German-language books and reviews. The English …
Germans pronouncing Hurrikan
Transblawg / It has been pointed out to me by Anon. of Frankfurt am Main that, as with ‘curry’, German newscasters have difficulty pronouncing ‘Hurrikan’ or ‘hurricane’. Some pronounce it in an acceptable English way, but other…
Anus motion/Übersetzungsprobleme
Transblawg / Matthew Baldwin of The Morning News reports - or reported - that Spanish-speaking drivers have been getting out of drunk driving cases because of a deficiency in Spanish-language cards used by traffic cops: “But the defense somehow got a copy …
In case in British and American English
Transblawg / There is a difference in meaning of ‘in case…+ verb’ in common U.S. and British usage. A non-native speaker could make a confusing mistake here. I quote the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995 ed.), the best learners&#…
Bright line
Transblawg / Mark Liberman at Language Log establishes that the noun phrase ‘bright line’ and the adjective ‘bright-line’ are missing in most general English dictionaries: Here’s another common expression that’s not in the stan…
Websters online dictionary - Rosetta edition
Transblawg / What on earth is this ‘dictionary’? Here it is on translator. There are seven pictures of translators, none of which are me. Very bizarre. If you click on ‘references’, you are taken to amazon.com. We know ‘Webster’…
Mayhews London Labour and the London Poor online
Transblawg / Henry Mayhew’s ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ has been digitized and put online by the University of Virginia Library. We always had a Mayhew at home, but maybe it isn’t so well-known outside Britain. He was a journalist…
German article comparing Ltd. and GmbH/Artikel vergleicht Ltd. und GmbH
Transblawg / There’s an article in the Anwaltsblatt (German) by Volker G. Heinz, who is a Rechtsanwalt and Notar in Berlin, comparing the English limited company with the German GmbH. I’ve already mentioned Heinz’s excellent comparative articles…
EU Savings Directive criticized/Besteuerung von Zinserträgen
Transblawg / In a Financial Times article still online, the EU Savings Directive comes in for some criticism, particularly in connection with its having been translated into French and back again. Council Directive 2003/48/EC of 3 June 2003 on taxation of saving…
Censored by US law/Impressumspflicht verletzt US-Recht
Transblawg / When I was reading JuraBlogs (shows the newsfeeds of German legal weblogs), I clicked on ‘Slip Opinion: Todesstrafe’ at the German American Law Blog. Instead of the entry, the following appeared on my screen: Kein Zugang aus impressumspfl…
Ethnic diversity in the UK/Ethnische Vielfalt in Großbritannien
Transblawg / The Independent today has a map showing the most ethnically diverse areas of Britain, or perhaps England and Wales - Scotland and Northern Ireland are described in text beside the map, but not coloured in. I’ll have to go to Brighton (least rel…
Tidy desk seminar/Mein Schreibtisch, frei und aufgeräumt
Transblawg / This is not a description of my desk but the title of the seminar for translators I went to in Munich on Saturday. It was about keeping your desk tidy. Of course, an untidy desk is a symptom rather than a disease. Here is a picture of a translator&#…
Magazine Rack - Issue 149
Handakte WebLAWg / You might enjoy: * Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker: Love and politics in France * Radley Balko in Reason: How do we ‘fix’ the inherent problems with elections? * James Sterngold in Mother Jones: Failure to launch. The Bush nucle…
Problem bear in Bavaria / Problembär, Schadbär, Risikobär
Transblawg / The term ‘problem bear’ seems to be used in English too. The bear whose recent movements have been Bavaria - Austria - Bavaria is apparently called Bruno (or JJ1) and has killed twenty sheep since the beginning of May - most bears only ki…
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