Canola / Rapeseed / Raps

Thanks to an article in the New Scientist, I now know that Rapsöl is really canola oil. Good to know - I always felt odd telling my wife, "Don't worry - we have more than enough rape oil for lunch!"

A Very Short Post

This guy is a genius.

Read Any Good Books Lately?

Guest workers are hitting the headlines in the U.S. I haven’t sifted through every report, but this article warns U.S. lawmakers of the very problems that caught Germany unawares. (Alas, I haven't managed to buy the full version yet. But I'll try, try again.)

The problem seems to stem from the word “guest”. In other words, the workers expect - and are expected - to leave one day. But they end up staying. In Toprak’s book, one young man says: “My mother always says, ‘One more year, then we’ll go to Turkey’. … But that’s what they always say. They always say that. Man, they’ve been saying that since I was in elementary school.” (p. 59)

Now, I’m too ill-informed to pontificate further. But I want to learn more. Most of us have been immigrants, so you might know of a good book on immigration. If so, please put it in the comments.

One caveat: if it’s not in English, I can’t afford to read it. Got to keep my edge, you know.

Young Turks

"After three days, fish and guests start to smell." – American saying

"It was a mistake for us to bring guest workers from foreign cultures into the country." - Helmut Schmidt, ex-chancellor of Germany

"We came as guest workers and 40 years later we are still guest workers. But it will change, the third generation will be German." - Recep Tuerkoglu, head of the Islamic Turkish Association

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I live under the same roof as a German-American teenager. For years, he has told me that Turkish teenagers have threatened and attacked him. Hearing this made my palms sweat. Not out of fear for him. But out of fear of what he might become.

After years of refusing to believe him, I now do. What I don’t understand is why. I hoped to find the answer in a book called “Ich bin eigentlich nicht aggressiv” (I’m not really aggressive) by Ahmet Toprak, a German social worker of Turkish descent.

This is a kind of book report about the book.

Toprak describes how 12 young men, all 3rd-generation Turkish immigrants, are socialized. Here are some tidbits:

• Many parents (2nd-generation immigrants) don’t know the difference between the various schools. For example, if their son goes to a Hauptschule (think “vo-tech”), they assume he can still become a doctor. (p. 31, p. 58)
• The kids often can’t speak German or Turkish properly. For example, until the mid-90s, Turkish kids in Bavaria had classes in Turkish so that they could be resocialized in Turkey. In other words, they were never supposed to be integrated in Germany. But can a German school prepare them for life in Turkey? (p. 58)
• Most of the kids don’t have their own rooms. One said, “My brothers and sisters do their homework at the kitchen table. And if company comes, they just don’t do any homework at all.” (p.36)
• These kids - born in Germany, raised in Germany and educated in Germany - have three-month visas. They can’t extend them because they keep committing petty crimes. But nor can they get a job with a three-month visa. (p. 40)
• They don’t have a realistic perception of Turkey. They idealize Turkey because they associate Germany with discrimination and negative experiences. They assimilate Turkey into their personality, so anyone who attacks Turkey attacks them directly. And because they’ve never lived there, they don’t have the reserve to brush off stupid insults. (p. 41)
• Intriguingly, religion is given an extremely superficial treatment in this book. In the margin, I wrote, “What is he hiding?” (p. 44)
• Honor is extremely important: “You have to be ready to go to jail for honor. You shouldn’t be ashamed of that. That’s what it’s like in Turkey. If you protect your honor, they reduce your sentence. … That’s what my Grampa said. My father said the same thing!” (p. 61)
• Honor (Ehre) consists of three different components:
  1) şeref (prestige): being seen as a good person because you do good works. (p. 45)
  2) namus (honor): honor as perceived by the outside world. There is a clear boundary between public and private. When someone oversteps the boundary, say, by insulting your mother, it is your job as a man to defend your mother ruthlessly and determinedly. A man’s namus depends on his wife’s behavior. If she doesn’t remain chaste, it’s because he’s not man enough to keep her chaste. (p. 46)
  3) saygι (respect): respect for older people, etc. (p. 47)
• Men have to respond to any challenge decisively, not pusillanimously. (p. 49)
• Masculinity is equally important. Men are not allowed to cry or appear weak. If a young man appears weak, he loses status within the family and “is no longer consulted in any decisions concerning the family.” (p. 149)
• Friendship is extremely important. No matter what your friend does, you have to stand up for him. In one case, this led to a brawl involving 35 to 50 kids in the Munich pedestrian zone in 1998. The rumble stemmed from a bet on a foosball game between a Turkish teenager and an Albanian one. The loser, who was supposed to buy the other player a beer, welched on the bet. So they decided to duke it out. Problem is, they all called their friends, who called their friends, who then called their friends. But most of them didn’t know why the fight happened: “No, I didn’t know what the reason was. I heard he needed help. I didn’t ask. … Well, what should I have said? They’ll laugh at you otherwise. You have to help your friends, no matter what.” (p. 62)
  In the fight, one boy was killed. Several were gravely injured.

Links (in German):
About a young Turkish prostitute in Germany
Young Turks as victims and perpetrators of violence
Article by Ahmet Toprak with much of the information in the book
Where Ahmet Toprak works

Flour

When I opened the door, I saw my wife frowning at two marbleized pound cakes on the counter. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You know the Turkish neighbors downstairs?” I nodded. There were four of them – two older parents in their sixties, and their two college-educated kids. “Well, we ran out of flour, so I went down there to borrow some and the father opened the door. He didn’t understand what I wanted.” She paused and pursed her lips. “He told me to come back in an hour so his daughter could interpret for him.”

“So where’d you get the flour?”

“I went down one floor and asked the Polish woman there for some. Her German’s much better.”

We recently ran into the daughter and told her the story. The woman, who had just passed the German bar exam, was flabbergasted. “I don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head. “He goes shopping. He knows what flour is.” She furrowed her brow. “I’ll have a word with him.” My wife objected. I didn’t. The man had lived in Germany for thirty years. Surely he had seen flour before.

The next day, a knock at the door. I open it to see the burly figure of the father. “Wife in?” he asks. I shake my head, slowly. “Then I tell you. You wife come down. Ask for --.” He put his palms out as if holding a soccer ball.

“Yeah, the flour,” I say.

He nods. “Flour. I no understand. Too fast! Next time, slow. If slow, I understand. Daughter tell me I make big mistake. She tell me, Papa, you make big mistake.”

I laugh. I can’t help it; it’s just a bag of flour, after all. “No, no, no,” I say. “It’s fine.”

“Next time,” he continues, hardly noticing my rudeness, “Ask slow. We have all. Flour, eggs, cheese. We buy big,” he adds, curving his arms out as though hugging a barrel. “Any time. You, you wife, come down. We give you. Any time.”

I thank him, watch him go down the stairs. We say goodbye several times.

They’re our favorite neighbors.

Things I Miss About The South

Yes, I'm from the South. And no, I don't say y'all - unless you're also from the South. Then it just kind of slips out. I can't help it, I swear.

Kudzu. This is the creepiest (har!) plant I have ever seen.


Kudzu eats cars for lunch.

Bourbon Street. The fun part is squeezing past knots of men formed around one woman who, for a two-dollar plastic bead necklace, just might flash her breasts at them. Typical statement heard on Bourbon Street: “Hey, let me by! I just wanna – no, don’t throw up on me, dammit!”


Moving at one block per hour.

Shotgun houses. They can be in various stages of decomposition.


The best house in town.

Corn on the cob. If it doesn’t come off a pickup truck on the side of the road, it doesn’t taste good.


Corn sure is special!

Belle De Jour in Portuguese

In a post dated lundi 7 mars, Belle de Jour comments on questions sent in by the Portuguese translator of her excellent book, The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl. Among other things, she frets over the transculturality of nipple-twisting:

(Translator:) Page 245 : I refuse to give him a nipple-twister
(Belle:) Do they not have nipples? Furthermore, do they not twist?

My question: shouldn't she call herself Belle du Jour? Sorry, my knowledge of French is rudimentary at best. While in France once, I wondered aloud why the waiter brought me a vegetarian ratatouille when I had ostensibly ordered a navy-bean soup. My dinner companion glanced at the menu and hissed, "légumes means vegetables, not legumes, you dummy!"

At least it was better than my first pizza in Germany as an exchange student. For toppings, I ordered olives, onions and "pepperoni", wanting nothing more than a dose of home. Imagine my shock when the pizza came: six whole, unpitted black olives, an inch-thick layer of onion slices and a huge hot pepper draped over the whole mess. Where's Pizza Hut when you need them?


This ain't Pizza Hut...

In Loco Veritas

I've got a new law humor link. Here's an excerpt:

I wish I could say that I became a tax attorney because of my love for numbers and clear cut rules, but the truth of the matter is that I became a tax lawyer for the same reason that musicians join bands – for the chicks.

Thanks to TaxProfBlog for pointing it out!

Slam, Bam, Thank You Ma'am

Ever heard of poetry slams? They’re all the rage in the States. Basically, a group of people get together and read their poetry to one another. It’s like a poetry reading, but with tequila instead of herbal tea.

Since this is such a great idea, I’m proposing we have translation slams. Every person gets a text, a pencil and a piece of paper and has 30 minutes to produce the best translation they can. Oh, wait a second - we already have those. They’re called “exams”.

Damn!

Big fat update: Someone apparently read my post, leapt into a time machine and added it to the program for this festival six months ago. Here's the evidence:

On Wednesday, March 30 at 16h00 be sure to attend our “Translation Slam / Le dire autrement”, the non-violent sport of translation.

Ah, the pain of plagiarism!

Making Things Easier

Deadlines keep getting tighter. Here is an actual conversation I had with a client*:

Client: We have about 400 lines that need to be translated by tomorrow.
Trench (looking at calendar): Sorry, no can do. I’m all booked up for the next several days.
Client: Tell you what - the translation doesn’t have to be all that good. Does that make things easier?

_______
*Actually, the agency did the talking. But they were representing my interests, right? Besides, what’s a little embellishment between friends, anyway?

Driver's License Woes

This sounds really familiar...

Thanks to Sonja Tomaskovic for the heads-up.

Google AdNonsense

People say the internet has revolutionized translation. Bullshit. Google has revolutionized translation. Now, if you can’t find a word on Google, it doesn’t exist.

So many of us have become Google drones that we advertise in droves with Google’s AdSense program. Enter “translation agency” in Google and you’ll pull up a bewildering array of AdSense ads and hits, all basically the same.

I, too, rode the AdSense bandwagon. At first, I hovered near the phone with sweaty palms and a dry throat, expecting a deluge of clients. In a four-month period, I had two destitute Ph.D. students ask me to translate their 600-page dissertations. (One of them even requested a per-word rate “because I’ll be revising it later.”) There was one inquiry from an electronics firm who answered neither my calls nor my e-mails. And, mysteriously, six inquiries for English into Dutch.

The vast majority of inquiries, however, went something like this:

From: PrettyGirl16
To: Trench Warrior
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2002 3:35 PM
Subject: PLS PLS PLS HELP!!!!

Cn u translaet this!!! I need it real bd!!! THX SO MUCH!!!!!!! ;-) ;-)

Ill chx 4 it 2morrow!!! THX THX!!!!!!

Attached was a ten-page term paper downloaded from a cheat site.

Suffice to say, I cancelled the service pretty quickly.

Here I Come, Hollywood

I love translation because it’s like acting without the stage fright. Got a contract? I can pretend to be Mitchell McDeere from The Firm. Have a PowerPoint presentation on a fly-by-night company? You can trust your pal, Bernie Ebbers. Want to threaten a competitor with legal action? Look out, here comes John Gotti. When the role (read: text) fits, it just flows. Some texts I don’t even have to finish reading: once I start one part, I know exactly how it rolls out.

The flip side is that you spend your entire day thinking someone else’s thoughts. It’s like being possessed by an evil spirit, except you get paid for it. Maybe that was really what was wrong with that girl in The Exorcist. She got a lousy text. A really lousy text.


Another case of overwork?

Naked Coed Killers From Mars

I recently heard an announcer on The World say, "They are still trying to slash poverty." It sounds like something out of a campy D-grade slasher flick:


C'mere, poverty!

I wish there was an English version of Der Spiegel's Hohlspiegel so I could send it in. The Hohlspiegel is the only thing I voluntarily subject myself to in German. It gives me hope that German literature will one day be a) not boring b) not pretentious c) about something other than WWII or East Germany. Enough already, willya?

Legal Lingo

This in ContractProf Blog:

A plaintiff who demanded and accepted a specific amount as due him from a breach had entered into an accord and satisfaction.

Huh? So I looked up accord and satisfaction in my Merriam Webster's Dictionary of Law:

Satisfaction:
execution of an accord by performance of the substituted obligation —often used in the phrase accord and satisfaction

And also found this:

Accord:
an accepted offer by which the parties agree that a specified future performance will discharge in full an obligation when performed even though the performance is of less value than the original obligation; also : the defense that an accord was agreed upon —usu. used in the phrase accord and satisfaction;

Other tidbits from Jones Day's Business Restructuring Review:

Stamp taxes are commonly imposed under state or local law in connection with the transfer of real or personal property.

(Last I checked, them was fighting words.)

... the bankruptcy court's ability to exempt from taxation the subject transaction ...

... administrative insolvency, or the absence of sufficient estate assets to pay administrative claims ...

... bankruptcy trustees, chapter 11 debtors-in-possession ...

... a request for action by a party-in-interest ...

... to work out a consensual plan ... to work out a consensual resolution ...

... "ancillary" bankruptcy proceedings ... (in which) a duly appointed representative of a foreign company that is the subject of a bankruptcy or insolvency proceeding abroad may commence a limited bankruptcy case in the U.S. for the purpose of protecting and, where appropriate, repatriating that debtor's assets to the host country.

Google Desktop - PDFs

The new release of Google Desktop Search now supports PDFs. You can also download plugins that support other formats, including OmniPage scans.

Found In The Want Ads

Today, I received the following e-mail, which I am not making up:

Description:
Yeknom Industries seeks English to Monkey Translator. And proper monkey.
Not that garbage slang the kids use today. One guy applied for the job, and told the boss, "Er er aaah aaaaaah!" That not even a full sentence!
"Er EEE er aaaah aaaaaah!" I mean come on, doesn't that just SOUND better? Good thing youth is curable!

REQUIREMENTS
About Yeknom Industries:
Yeknom Industries largest monkey collective in world. Found in 1976 with patent of stick, Yeknom Industries operate 22 countries, employ chimpanzees, and a humans. If have opposable thumb, even one, and considered cog in bloated industry machine, explore Yeknom Industries'
career jobs. www.yeknominc.com

Thesaurus On Steroids

I have a new toy: the "Phrase Finder", by J.I. Rodale. According to the first page, it is

"Three volumes in one comprising

Name-Word Finder
Metaphor Finder
Sophisticated Synonyms"

And it's from 1958.

The index alone accounts for the first 200 pages.

The Name-Word Finder contains entries like this:

LEMNIAN
Lemnian refers to the island of Lemnos in the north Aegean Sea. The proverbial phrase Lemnian deeds alludes to actions of unusual barbarity and cruelty, and arose from two horrible massacres perpetrated by an entry in a book that was this long and boring. In any event, Lemnos was an island that may or may not have sunk into the sea, but I'm sure that your eyes have glazed over at this point. The second was the slaughter of all children born of Athenian mothers and Lemnian fathers and was prompted by the men's suspicion that this entry is getting duller and duller and more and more useless as time goes on. Lemnos as also the center of the cult of Hephaestus (Bill Gates), because it was on that island that the god fell when Zeus kicked him out of Harvard.

atrocious Lemnian inhumanity"

That takes up 500 pages.

Then, there is the Metaphor Finder. This beauty has entries like this:

JUDGE (v.)
weigh in the balance; weigh each side of question; preside over a court of appeal; umpire a contest; weigh in the scales of one's judgment; hold the scales; set a question at rest; weigh with a glance; measure a matter; sit upon a decision; bring up for the count; appraise by rule of thumb; weigh the pros and cons; referee a match; sit at the broad green cloth; reflect the great eye of justice; call to stand before the higher court; enroll another in the Doomsday book; bring to book; hold the scales even; administer even-handed justice; give a square deal.
(see decide, determine, doom, law, condemn, legal, lawyer, official, rebuke)

Entries like "KILL" are even better. That section takes up 200 pages.

Finally, there is the Sophisticated Synonyms section, which has entries like this:

BUSY
As busy as a one-armed goalkeeper; as busy as a cat in a butcher shop; steeped to the eyebrow; tied up; busy as pipers; up to his neck; up to his neck; was so busy that he never read the Sunday papers before Monday or Tuesday; up to their eyes in plans for; I am so busy I do not know where I am afoot or ahorseback; (and my personal favorite:) busy as a one-armed obstetrician delivering quintuplets.

(See active, work.)

That takes up 200 pages.

Don't confuse it with Hugon's "Modern Word Finder", which is so pedantic it makes Strunck & White look like Sonny & Cher. Unless, of course, you have problems keeping "perdition", "sacrifice" and "forfeit" apart. If so, you are in the wrong business.

Take My Business - Please!

Boy, does word get around fast. No sooner do I rank a mention from Margaret Marks and the Naked Translator than I receive this fax:


Hostile Takeover Bid

The tears come from my initial misgivings that this might be a joke, or spam. But then I realized how valuable my incoherent ramblings are to a multinational power player in investment banking. So I've decided to sell my business for a mere € 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I plan on using the discounted cash flow to value my company, mainly because that bible of investment banking, "Monkey Business" refers to it as the "grandaddy of all crocks of shit. It's the technique that makes Linda Lovelace look like a Catholic schoolgirl and Richard Nixon look like Abe Lincoln."

Soon, I hope to be updating you on what the rum in the Bahamas tastes like, and how to cope with the horrors of sand in your suit.

Update: Peer Review

Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed, and the Fall of Arthur Andersen by Barbara Ley Toffler calls peer review "more of a backslapping exercise than anything else, since no Big 5 firm ever issued anything other than a clean bill of health to its peers."

I wonder if I should add that definition to my glossary?

CPA Journal Tidbits

Things I found interesting, unusual or familiar in the January 2005 edition:

Peer review program that ... reports on non-SEC-issuer accounting ...

... errors-and-omissions coverage for tax preparation ... (sound familiar?)

Under existing accounting rules, restricted stock grants are considered an expense, but fixed, "at the money," stock option grants are not.

Auditors returning to an engagement rely on prior-year workpapers to help plan the audit.

Beginning in 2003, all nonrefundable personal tax credits are allowed to the extent of the full amount of an individual's regular tax and the AMT.

... previously deductible environmental cleanup costs must be capitalized as indirect costs of inventory in accordance with IRC section 263A.

Because no cost recovery is allowed for land...

The fact pattern in Revenue Ruling 2004-18...

... the inventory's proper share of those indirect costs ...

... the adjusted book value method-net asset value method calculates the value of a professional practice by subtracting the economic value of the business' liabilities from the total value of its assets...

Taking a reverse mortgage on the house ...

... these values are outliers, representing unusual data ...

Business phenomena such as wildcat strikes ...

The regression line is often referred to as the least squares regression line or the line of best fit.

T tables are used to find values for sample sizes less than 60.

Z tables are used for large sample sizes.

Coefficient of correlation / coefficient of determination / coefficient of nondetermination


When products or services are transferred (sold) between various parts of a company, a transfer price or a chargeback must be determined.

The federal tax deposit should be called into the EFTPS program at least one business day before the deposit is due;

Passive-Aggressive

Today, I'm working on an annual report for the research arm of a large organization. It's all very hush-hush, so I can't give any more information. Or if I did, I'd have to kill you.

What gets me, though, is the fact that the entire 50-page report is written in the passive form. It feels like it's sucking my soul away, one unfocused sentence after another.

Which brings me to George Orwell. He once wrote 6 guidelines for good writing. The Economist, that shining beacon of style, lists them in its own Style Guide. I've got them printed out and tacked to the wall behind my monitors. Here they are:

· Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

· Never use a long word where a short one will do.

· If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.

· Never use the passive where you can use the active.

· Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

· Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I also own the StyleWriter, an absolutely marvelous virtual editor that takes forever to use, but offers some valuable guidance on tightening up my writing style. I've also got its edicts on plain writing tacked onto my wall:

1. Plan and organize your material.
2. Keep your average sentence length low.
3. Use verbs to give your writing action.
4. Make every word count.
5. Use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar.
6. Read and revise everything you write

I particularly like No. 4, which is a more positive variation on Strunck & White's terse command, "Omit needless words."

Another book I've found extremely useful was Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams. No matter how often I read it, I learn something new every time.

Update: I just ran the Economist's article on the SATs through the StyleWriter. It rated an "Average". Maybe I should try to get my money back...

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Lawyer Jokes!

A law firm that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Odd Todd with briefs - in every sense of the word.

Something Awful is threatened with another lawsuit. Lucky for them, they can count on the services of Leonard "J." Crabs. Leonard "J." Crabs positively shines in this, his greatest case.

And my favorite undercover lawyer.

Clash of the Titans

Ladies and gentlemen, in the left corner I give you the challenger Werner Georg Patels! Tireless promoter of TranslatorsCafe.com! Translation educator extraordinaire! And the wielder of a fierce left jab!

In the right corner, I give you the one, the only, heavyweight champion sumo wrestler of the world - Yamishogun!

Click here to see these two men duke it out in a no-holds-barred battle for the championship of the world! You'll be delighted! Entertained!

Satisfaction guaranteed! No refunds.

Ode to U-Jobs

Old Alexander von O
Attacked one translating schmoe
"Shame on you," said he,
"You sent your quote to me!
And now lots of people know!"

(I won't be quitting my day job anytime soon.)

One of the most tragic victims of so-called "progress" is u-jobs. For years, we were regaled with Alexander von Obert's trenchant wit ("So what's your real job? Trash collection?"). He was inexhaustible in weeding out incompetents, idiots, the weak, the hungry and - most of all - the cheap. Yours truly once sent him a kind e-mail because his server appeared to be on the fritz. Being a service-conscious administrator, he responded immediately with a withering e-mail insinuating that I had gotten my head firmly stuck in a rather private portion of my anatomy, and would I be so kind as to remove it.

Now, u-jobs is efficient. You can't accidentally announce your prices for all the world to see. You can't send as much spam or useless advertisements. As a result, there's much less reason for AvO to weigh in with his priceless witticisms and clever comebacks to delight readers. Instead, efficiency reigns. While he may be making more money and becoming a better technical writer, we have lost the Grinch of the translation community. And that's the real tragedy.

Trench Warrior Has Not Left His Desk. I Repeat, Trench Warrior Has Not Left His Desk.

My clients are conspiring to keep me chained to my desk this week. Updates will resume once I've foiled their nefarious plans.

Oh, to be as consistent as Margaret Marks!