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Transblawg | 18. Februar 2012 —Deutschlandfunk Presseschau Deutschland und international, Samstag, 18. Februar 2012 12:50 Uhr About twice a week, when I'm driving to appointments, I hear the Deutschlandfunk station reporting on the press. I'm going to quote it below, but today's text won't be there forever, although there is an a…
Transblawg | 28. Januar 2012 —There was a query on Proz this week on a topic I remember once discussing on u-forum: when you translate a judgment from German to English, how do you indicate that part of it is in reported speech? I basically agreed with the solution in this case, although it wasn't quite what I would do (using wo…
Transblawg | 26. Januar 2012 — People seem to like Chinglish - this is an example of Cheutsch.…
Transblawg | 6. Dezember 2011 —When Germans talk in German about Body Mass Index, they always pronounce it Mahss, like the German word for measure or litre of beer. I have found this odd, but it occurred to me that they aren't actually saying the English word (mass like German Masse), but have converted it into a new German term …
Transblawg | 19. Juni 2011 —Here is a press release of Saarbrücken University which I feel I ought to report. It appeared in the FAZ recently too. Bei der Lektüre von Geschäftsberichten deutscher Unternehmen trifft man auf viele englische Begriffe. Damit verstoßen die Firmen vermutlich gegen das Aktien- und Handelsgesetz,…
Transblawg | 18. Juni 2011 —This is an article from the FAZ written by Tim Schroder and preserved on the website of German Language Services. I don't know how old it is, but I found Tim Schroder credited as a translator for a Bertelsmann publication in 2010. But obviously it dates from a time when people smoked in cafés here. …
Transblawg | 17. Juni 2011 —John Wells has a blog entry on how English words are pronounced when they turn up in German texts. (Yesterday he had one on the Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch, which was too heavy for me). It's quite a puzzle. There was a sweet bar called Twix that was renamed Raider (pronounced rider) and then back…
Transblawg | 3. Mai 2011 —I just had to translate Lohndumping into English. Not easy! Someone on leo.org suggests using wage dumping plus a definition. It's true, sometimes a single term needs a single term (one or two words) rather than a long definition, to work in a text. Apparently Lohnunterbietung is a synonym. So the s…
Transblawg | 30. Dezember 2010 —The Bavarian transport minister, Peter Ramsauer, has long since banned a lot of English words from the German language in his ministry. Here's an interview in German, which appeared in Stern in February 2010. This story was widely reported once again yesterday, in the UK press as well as the German.…
Transblawg | 25. August 2010 —Here is another of those words that might have a different meaning in the UK and Germany - Google gives German sites with both meanings. BBC News: Fake sign promotes Cotswold viewpoint as 'dogging' area That means some kind of public sexual activity. And Lily Merklin's book refers to any kind of spo…
Transblawg | 5. August 2010 —I booked a train ticket on Tuesday. I was not properly informed before I did so. This is a warning not to try booking a train ticket without assistance from someone who knows what they're doing. This is the screen with which Deutsche Bahn ticket machines greet the would-be passenger. The woman looks…
Transblawg | 23. Juli 2010 —Apparently really think and elegant women in the USA and perhaps UK too have now made the Bad Wörishofer sandals a fashion item. They follow Birkenstocks. The name comes from the spa town Bad Wörishofen. As far as I can tell, the special feature is the insole (Fußbett). I first read about this trend…
Transblawg | 13. Juli 2010 —The Independent reports today that enough fat is being removed from the sewers under Leicester Square to fill nine double-decker buses: Enough fat to fill nine double-decker buses is being removed from sewers under London's Leicester Square. A team of "flushers" equipped with full breathing appa…
Transblawg | 19. Juni 2010 —I linked earlier to a clip of Nick Clegg speaking Dutch. Recently the Guardian had an article about all the foreign languages he claims to speak. His Spanish apparently had its limits: Trouble came later at question time. Sitting without earphones on – and so without access to the translators – he…
Transblawg | 17. Juni 2010 —I heard about the version of Lena's song that was done by eight students from Münster for the World Cup: Schland o Schland, but I was too slow to real…
Transblawg | 25. August 2010 —Here is another of those words that might have a different meaning in the UK and Germany - Google gives German sites with both meanings. BBC News: Fak…
Transblawg | 5. Februar 2009 —I gather that the open source mapping community is using the new English word motorroad to mean a highway with motorway-type access restrictions. I ju…
