We Are The Champions

I'm gnawing my way through excruciatingly witty ad copy today. To get through some of the bumpier spots, I've been checking out the U.S. competitors. Suddenly, I realized a big difference between U.S. and German slogans that had always bothered me on a subconscious level.

All-American slogan: "Satisfying customers for 30 years!"
Typisch deutscher Werbespruch: "Mit Erfolg seit 30 Jahren!"*

Is it just me, or do German companies come off sounding like jerks?


*"Successful for 30 years!"

Buckling Under...

Lots of work today - and more to come this weekend. But here's something to tide you over: an interesting article on managing international transactions by a Canadian lawyer. You have to register to view the article, but it doesn't take long.

He says this about language and cultural issues:

This is sometimes the biggest hurdle to overcome in an international transaction. During intense negotiations, one group may break into a foreign language, which leads the other party to suspect devious actions and bad faith. Cultural differences can often produce similar concerns: one side invites the other to join it for social activities during the negotiation process, whereas the other party prefers to remain alone. The problem is that by refusing the invitation, the party extending the invitation views the refusal as a supreme insult.

Beneath The Buzz: ITIL

CIO Magazine rips into the myth that the IT Infrastructure Library is a cure-all in this article.

The comments are interesting, too.

Actually, the entire Beneath The Buzz column is interesting. Too bad I can't say that about the rest of the magazine, which is essentially a series of advertorials.

Update: Just found a nice introduction to ITIL.

Why I Love This Job

Yesterday's topics: pens, pizza and mascara

Today's topics: money laundering

Not one second of boredom here! Well, maybe one second. Or two. But no more than two seconds of boredom!

TPB Opens A Can Of Whoop-Ass On CPAJ

The February 2005 issue of CPA Journal has an article on IRC section 509(a)(3) supporting organizations:

Supporting organizations can be used by anyone in the high-income tax bracket who wishes to retain control of assets within the family. They can receive a 50% adjusted gross income (AGI) deduction for removing the asset ownership from their estate, yet maintain virtually the same control they had as fee-simple owners.

Hmmm. A tax shelter. Hmmm. We-e-e-lllll, it's gotta be kosher, right? I mean, it's in the Internal Revenue Code and all.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I read yesterday in TaxProfBlog about

reforms to stop the use of 'supporting organizations' for generous tax breaks rather than charitable purposes.

For the record, CPA Journal had put that article in its "Essentials" section.

Source Or Target? Yin Or Yang? Death Or Hell On Earth?

In locker rooms, guys talk a lot about whether they're a "butt and legs man" or a "boobs man". In fact, that's pretty much all they talk about in locker rooms. Translation is a lot like locker rooms, except there's less risk you'll get thwacked on the ass with a wet towel in the shower.

I, myself, am a target man. Nothing floats my boat better than a sweet, juicy target text that reads, feels and sounds like the author has never been farther upstate than Bowling Green, Kentucky, let alone Germany. I hadn't done any stick-to-source* texts in so long, I had forgotten what it was like.

Until, that is, I got some standard contract terms that shriveled up my translation libido faster than a naked picture of Rush Limbaugh. For me, it was the translation equivalent of getting thwacked with a wet towel. Really hard.


Real men thwack (and translate) to the death.

*Stick-to-source: adj. Refers to texts that - c'mon, this is a humor post. Do I really gotta get into theory here? Just roll with it. Believe me, it will make it a lot funnier.

The Hired Guns Weigh In

To Whom It May Concern:

It has come to our attention that the operator of the website trenchtranslation.blogspot.com (hereinafter "the Website") has made numerous disparaging, hateful and defamatory comments regarding the World Association of Lexicographers (hereinafter "Harmless Drudges").

We hereby demand that you cease and desist from mounting any such groundless attacks against Harmless Drudges on the Website until such time as we have looked up the exact definitions of "trenchant" and "blog", and have made a determination as to whether it means "cash in the bank for us".

Yours faithfully,

Lex Luther, Esq.
Attorney-At-Law

Fischer On Phoenix

If you've been following the visa affair in Germany, Joschka Fischer is defending his position live on Phoenix right now.

Here's the link. Click on the red Live Stream button, sit back and enjoy. Have a brewski, get your chips and dip. Invite your friends over. It's like the Superbowl! Maybe Joschka will also have a wardrobe malfunction? Oh, the suspense!

Let's Play Guess The Reference!

This one goes out to all the translators in Annual Report Land:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Profits out of the dead land, mixing
Targets and desire, stirring
Dull hopes with earnings forecasts.
Winter kept us warm, nurturing
Indexes with measured hikes, feeding
A little life with warmed-up forecasts.
The 200-point index plunge surprised us, coming over Wall Street
With a shower of gloom; we stopped in Fifth Avenue,
And went on in the sunlight, into Starbucks,
And drank coffee, and day-traded for an hour.

In A Bookstore: Vol. 4

Clerk (turning to Other Clerk): Remind me again: why am I doing this job?

Other Clerk: Because you hate translating.

Clerk: Oh, yeah. Right. (Picks up a broom and starts sweeping behind the counter. Soon, he begins whistling cheerfully)

In A Bookstore: Vol. 3

Clerk: Dictionaries 'R Us, Buddy speaking, how may I help you?

Translator: You RIP-OFF BASTARDS! I bought this CD, this, whatchamacallit, Eichborn. And now I can only use it on one PC?

Clerk: I'm sorry sir, if there are any restrictions they're not ours. We just sell the dictionaries.

Translator: 500 euros.

Clerk: Excuse me?

Translator: 500 euros is what I paid for this piece of crap. Now I gotta buy a new one if I upgrade my PC. You BASTARDS! I HOPE-

Clerk: (hangs up)

Standard Contract Terms Link

This is an interesting article on the conscionability of standard contract terms. He mentions U.S., French, German and South African contract terms. Under the reasonable expectations test of the Uniform Commercial Code

the clarity and conspicuousness of [a possibly inconsciable] term ... [are] considerations in determining knowledge of the weaker party.

Is that why U.S. standard contract terms for consumers list certain sections in caps? Do they honestly think it's easier to read?

In A Bookstore: Vol. 2

Clerk: Dictionaries 'R Us, Buddy speaking, how may I help you?

Translator: Hi, I was wondering if you could tell me how to say "property, plant and equipment" in Bengali.

Clerk: Sorry, ma'am. We can't give out that information. You have to buy a dictionary and look it up for yourself.

Translator: C'mon, I'm in a real bind here!

Clerk: Sorry, ma'am. Company policy.

Translator: Well, thanks for nothing! Bye! (hangs up)

Belle Strikes Again

Belle de Jour blitzes her readers once again. Don't walk, run to her latest post. On the menu today: the Italian translation and the U.S. edits.

In A Bookstore: Vol. 1

Clerk: Dictionaries 'R Us, Buddy speaking, how may I help you?

Translator: Got Finnish dictionaries on trout?

Clerk: Trout?

Translator: Yeah. Trout. You know, the fish? Got any?

Clerk: Let's see... just trout, or river-dwelling fish in general?

Translator: Well, I'd prefer a dictionary on the migration patterns of trout in the Yukon, but at this point, I'd settle for anything on trout.

Clerk: I'm sorry - the best I can do is "The Language of Salmonology" in Hungarian.

Translator: I'll take it! Don't let anyone else buy it. I'll be right there!

Clerk: Righty-O. (hangs up)

My Reward For A Graveyard Shift

In my inbox this morning:

"Dear Mr. Warrior,

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

What would I do without you?

I'm off to XYZ now with my 'perfect' text."

What more could you ask for?

The Conversation Pit

Today's topic:
If language were a cell, what organelle would the translator be?

Talk amongst yourselves.


Want some protoplasm with that?

It's 3 AM. Do You Know Where Your Translator Is?

It's 11 at night, and I'm still not done. I'm not a night owl. But in a week when clients are jamming jobs down my gullet faster than I can chew, I'm lucky to get home at all. What kills me is that they're all important. New clients, potential clients, big accounts, big deals. I can safely turn down piss-ant press releases from huge multinationals. They're so big, they never even read what they write themselves, let alone what I write. Let someone else do them.

No, it's the small businesses calling this week. And they're the apples of my eye. When they call, I burn the midnight oil, stock up on dictionaries and agonize, agonize, agonize over my translations.

Of course, none of this makes any financial sense. With the big companies, I make more money. But they don't need me. And what's the point of doing this job if you don't feel needed? Fame?

Ergomania!

I almost always have WorkPace on. When I'm swamped, it's usually paused. But most of the time it's worth the extra aggravation. Try it. You might like it. Or at least not totally hate it.


A real pain in the neck

I also rest my rear on the patented Haider Bioswing chair. Don't believe the marketing hype, though. It doesn't revolutionize sitting. It won't make you a genius. It's just a really good chair. A really ... expensive chair. You may have to sell a kidney to pay for it.


Aiighhh! Get this phone creature off my face!

Before I moved into a separate office, I sat on a used Stokke chair I bought for peanuts on eBay. It's still my favorite chair, and I wish I could use it in my new set-up. I have to move around more now, though, and I really need a chair with casters. Too bad.


Rock 'n roll!

I also use two monitors - one 15" and one 19". Unless you're working in the back seat of your Volkswagen Beetle after your landlord evicted you, I highly recommend doing the same. You can have your dictionaries (or Trados Workbench) open in one screen, and the text you're working on in another screen. It cuts down on mousing enormously.


Take us to your leader!

Service4Trans Unveils Next-Generation Bullshit Detector

NixBS 2.0 delivers crucial value-added for translation professionals

April 18, 2005 - Service4Trans, Inc., one of the leading providers of software tools for translation professionals, has just released NixBS 2.0, its much-anticipated next-generation bullshit detector for translation professionals.

The tool fills a gap in the market for a database-driven, media-rich technology that differentiates between actual fact and specious blather. Drawing on brute-force processing methods and aggressive algorithms, NixBS 2.0 helps translators identify terms in their dictionaries that are slightly, mostly or totally bullshit and instantly launches denial-of-service (DOS) attacks against the websites of the incompetent lexicographers who committed the gravest errors.

Service4Trans, Inc.'s CEO, Jeremiah Wuzza Bullfrog, explained the principle behind the tool: "Rather than populating cyberspace with bogus terminology, translators can now focus on researching terms that the lexicographer stole from another poorly researched dictionary. Obviously, we're very excited about this innovation, which puts us in a class above the competition."

Dictionary publishers Langenscheidt and Axel Springer could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman at PONS was quoted as saying, "Yeah? Well, yo' mama, too!"

***

Service4Trans, Inc. is a Fortune 500,000,000,000,000,000 Company and one of the leading providers of software tools for translation professionals. Founded in present-day San Francisco in 1521 by a group of Aztecs fleeing the Spanish invaders, Service4Trans has been transformed into a highly advanced, warlike society that communicates with bits of brightly colored string and pictures of farm animals.

I, Robot

Many clients are positively drooling over the prospect of a machine that will replace us. I’ve had people at client companies say to my face, “Oh, you’re a translator? Huh – well, in a few years, computers will be doing your job for you!” And then – I love this – they laugh.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Real funny.

Ask these people whether machines churn out their press releases, and they look at you blankly. Is their software automatically generated? A shake of the head. But their design process is fully automated, right? Well, no.

But translation, of course, is simple, right? I mean, you already have the text. You just have to, you know, transfer it to another language. It can’t be that hard, can it?

This is the point where I have to physically restrain myself from STABBING THEM THROUGH THE EAR IN THE BRAIN WITH A BIC PEN. I haven’t killed anyone so far. But keep your eye on the headlines. You never know.

The Wages Of Sin, Or: Does Sin Pay?

Knowing we are all sinners at heart, ClientSide News LLC decided to publish the most brazen whore of a translation journal I have ever seen. It is a shameless, vapid, blatant vehicle for translation vendor advertisements.

Interested? I knew you would be! Click here, and be sure to check your scruples at the door!

Buzzword Bonanza

"Low-hanging fruit"

"to go cashflow positive"

"opex spend vs. capex spend"

All this and more here...

Get Thee To A Memery!

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

The Collected Works of Everything Ever Written, by Anonymous, et al. (Margaret took the only other good one.)

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

It wasn’t a crush. It was love, dammit.

The last book you bought is?

I bought ten books at once from Amazon to reward myself for finishing a big job. But I'll just mention the two best ones:

Alasdair Gray, 1982
B.S. Johnson, Christie Malry’s Own Double-entry

What are you currently reading?

Collected Stories by Richard Yates
John Berryman’s The Dream Songs
Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed, and the Fall of Arthur Andersen by Barbara Ley Toffler

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

See Question 1. (Vols 1-5)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

I'll pass, thanks.

This Just In

"Deutsche Messe AG is owned by its shareholders."

How extraordinary.

Guest Workers, Part 4

You may remember that I recently mentioned an honor killing in Berlin.

Just now, I saw the victim's picture on Deutsche Welle:


Hatin Sürücü

Why I Love My Agency Clients

A little while ago, a client "fixed" a press release I had translated. Call me a frustrated poet, but the changes squelched any aspirations that text ever had.

So what did I do? I complained to the agency and got an immediate response. They told me to ignore the changes - they would talk to the client for me.

Who, me bitch about agencies? Never!

Drop Your Panties, Sir William!

Scott Kurtz revisits the Hungarian Phrasebook shtick.

Eeek! A Mouse!

Margaret Marks beat me to the punch today. Kind of.

I was actually going to mention the Anir Optical Mouse. Again, it takes some getting used to, but it is a vast improvement over many other types of mice.


Anir Optical Mouse

The Evoluent Vertical Mouse comes in both a left-hand and a right-hand version, so you can mouse with both hands. My wife uses the left-hand model and needed very little time to get used to it.


Evoluent Vertical Mouse

Well, Does It?

Judy: Hello, thanks for calling the Translation Ethics Hotline, this is Judy, how may I help you?

Trench: Hi, I’m in a bit of a quandary here. You see, lately I’ve been getting nothing but joint venture contracts, partnership agreements, bills of sale, that sort of thing.

Judy: I see.

Trench: And, well, it makes me wonder how the stock market’s doing.

Judy: The stock market?

Trench: Yeah. You see, if I get all these contracts and glowing stock analyses and whatnot, doesn’t that mean that the stock market’s going to get better?

Judy: I guess so, sure.

Trench: And if I just happen to have some capital lying around that I need to invest, and I just happen to invest it in some equity funds because I see things are improving in the business community…

Judy: Uh-huh.

Trench: Well, I guess my question is: does that qualify as insider trading?

On A Lighter Note

I've just stumbled across a translation blog called "Paul Frank's Language Jottings." The entries range from German to Latin and Chinese. Here's his description:

Here you'll find occasional jottings on language, translation, and whatever strikes my fancy. I'm a Chinese-English translator for Sinorama magazine in Taipei, China Rights Forum in New York City, and a few other folks here and there. You can reach me at paulfrank@post.harvard.edu.

My Final Exam

From the tangle of voices in the interpreter's booth, one thought tightened into a clear, hard knot: “Fuck this! No way in hell!”

I gently raised one hand, splayed out on the formica tabletop, and pressed it against my knee to stop the shaking. A moist, dirty palm print remained next to my homemade notepad and the five pens I had arranged carefully in a row before the speech began.

I leaned in to the microphone, like a biker rising up on his pedals, as if that small motion would get me through the text faster. I wanted nothing more desperately than to escape, to disappear. But where to?

In this cube-shaped booth, one entire side was made of glass. Looking through this window into the audience, I saw thirty headphoned heads nodding in unison after every sentence I finished. On one side of the room, my teachers were writing furiously in their notepads, variously frowning and smiling.

I was trapped.

Leaning forward even more, I closed my eyes and battered through the text, sentence by sentence. Suddenly, my headphones went silent, made a slight click, and then piped in a gentle voice: “That’s it. You can get up now.”

My legs trembled as I stumbled out of the booth. The door swung shut and I took in one shuddering breath after another. “Three more days,” I thought. “Three more days, two more exams, and then I never have to interpret again.” Behind a larger door ten feet distant sat thirty people, waiting to pat me on the back and tell me that in a few short days, I, too, would be a fully certified conference interpreter.

Only an hour previously, I would have smiled and agreed. To be an interpreter! The fame! The glory! And here I was, ready to give it up.

I squared my shoulders, and walked through the door.

News Flash: German Is Germane To Germany

In the beginning, I viewed learning German as intellectual body-building: something that was good for your general form, but not all that useful. Like adding up license plate numbers while waiting at a bus stop, it was a good way to pass the time. I’d carry on conversations with myself in German, or call up girls I knew and leave messages on their answering machine in German.

When I came to Germany, I was shocked to discover that Germans actually spoke German. Deep down, I had always suspected that German was something only spoken in public. Once people went home, they shed their public persona and spoke the only real language: English.

The only real language, that is, except Spanish. Everyone knows that Mexicans speak Spanish. Except when they’re home. Then they speak English, like the rest of us. Right?

I Translate, Ergo I Type

If you're an ergonomics junkie like me, you may be interested in Datahand's sale:

While inventory lasts, we are offering 50% lower pricing for DataHand® Ergonomic Keyboards: Personal $497ea., ProII $647ea. and Ten Key $247ea. The new pricing includes a 90 day limited warranty.

Since they normally cost in the neighborhood of $1200, that's actually a bargain. I would recommend the ProII version - it offers remappable keys, and with the keyboard's layout, you won't be able to use a software remapper.

The only downside is the steep learning curve. I'm finally coming to grips with my own Datahand keyboard. Before, I would give up and use my trusty ErgoElan when deadlines loomed near. Now, it only takes a little concentration. Soon, I hope to not have to think at all when I translate.

Wait - that didn't quite sound right.

Blast From The Past - 86

I just read this headline in Wired News:

Drunk? Your Car Will '86' You

I used to work at restaurants, where 86 meant "cancel". As in, "Hey, man, 86 the potato cheese soup! Someone spit in it again!" The tickertape printouts churned out at the line would also use '86' to mean "hold". So "CSAL 86 PARM" told you to not put Parmesan in the next Caesar salad you made.

I hadn't heard that word in about fifteen years...

As The World Turns

It throws up these reports:

Immigration in Sweden. It appears to have some parallels to the situation in Germany.

Bloggers who bridge the culture gap. It reports in detail on Global Voices Online. This Harvard University initiative showcases bloggers, particularly from the developing world.

New Buzzword - Triage / Priorisierung

The past few weeks, I've been hearing a lot about triage. Here's an IT definition:

1) A strategy designed to process the most important items first, such as dealing with priority email messages first and less important messages second.

Sounds like Priorisierung to me...

It's actually a medical term. Here's the medical definition:

1) This is a system of sorting patients according to their illness or injuries so that patients can be steered to the most appropriate health worker.

New Translation Portal

Among translation portals, the new kid on the block is BabelPort.

Unlike the other portals, it offers translation industry news. Hmmm. Maybe it will be a real competitor for ProZ.

Their opening page is refreshingly casual:

Why babelport.com and what's the deal with this ugly logo?

I agree. Their logo is absolutely hideous.

Their explanation is slightly surreal:

We saw was the Monument of the Battle of Nations, the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, commemorating the Battle between Napoleonic Troops and the Prussian and Russian Allies of 1813. So we figured: “This thing is huge, monstrous, old, and it still stands!“.

That's as good a reason as any, I guess.

Guest Workers, Part 3

This is a World report about the honor killing of a Turkish-Kurdish woman in Berlin. She was allegedly shot to death by her brothers in retribution for leaving her husband by arranged marriage.

There was a similar case in the United States in the early 90s. Back then, it was the father killing his daughter for shaming the family. Again, a Kurdish family, albeit one from Iran and not Turkey.

After this earlier killing happened, I brought up the case with an Iranian friend of mine. Her response: "Well, they're peasants. My family's nothing like that."

Guest Workers, Part 2

This is an excellent report on the "border activism" of The Minuteman Project, a group President Bush, to his credit, has referred to as "vigilantes". (If you have problems playing this WMA file, just right-click, save the link address and copy it into Winamp or Windows Media Player. There is a "Play URL" option in the File menu for both programs.)

The Guardian/Observer has an article on The Minuteman Project here.

In another parallel with the mass migration of unlettered Mexicans to the U.S., The Economist recently said:

EUROPEANS' perceptions of Turkey are often shaped by the Turks they know. In Germany, these tend to be the Gastarbeiter (guest workers) who moved there in the 1960s to take up low-grade jobs that the booming post-war economy could no longer fill from the domestic labour market. Over 2m Turks came, and they were mostly honest, hard-working and religious people. But they were economic refugees, poor villagers from the east, not model citizens of Ataturk's republic.

Many of their children, though, have moved on, to become anything from prominent European parliamentarians to star European footballers. One of them even married one of the sons of Helmut Kohl, a former German chancellor. It is just the sort of transformation that Ataturk would have wished for his countrymen.

Yet experience of the Gastarbeiter has left Germans in two minds about Turkish entry into the EU. Their main worry is about a massive further inflow of economic migrants. The Social Democrat-led government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is generally supportive, but the opposition Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel, have vowed to do everything possible to wreck Turkey's application. A federal election is due next year, with the outcome still wide open. Even Mr Kohl, the Christian Democrat chancellor who was voted out in 1998, has spoken against Turkish membership, saying that he is “convinced that Turkey will not fulfil the Copenhagen criteria”. These are the basic conditions for joining the EU, which lay down that “membership requires that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities.”

German Buzzwords You Love To Hate

Kundennähe. Try to find a definition of this word. Go on – I dare you. In my extensive research (i.e., searching Google for 60 seconds), I found zilch. Sometimes it means “better customer service”. Sometimes “having a branch close to the customer”. Who knows?
That said, I recently saw something in English that covered both bases: “even closer personal service”. Maybe I’ll give that one a try.

X setzt auf Y. Has anyone ever come up with a decent translation for this? All it means is X bought Y’s product or service. But you have to dress it up. Sure, if one of the two is a bank you can say that X banks on Y. Everything else is equally weak:
X goes with Y (I guess X is wearing Y’s class ring, too.)
X opts for Y (at gunpoint, I gather)
X partners with Y (a bit exaggerated)
Y saves X’s business/life/marriage/etc. (Y would certainly love that one)

Faszination Produkt. This means absolutely nothing. But it sounds good. The challenge is to invent something equally windy.

Quips and Quiddities

"I'm outside Modena," W------ says. I've called her because a major account needs a translation into German. I don't work into German, but W------ does. In fact, she's been translating since I was in diapers.

"Modena?" I ask. "Where is Modena, anyway?"

"It's in Italy. Outside Bologna. You know where Bologna is?"

"No - I'm American, you know. I'm not supposed to know anything about geography."

Luckily, she laughs at this quip.

About a year ago, I wasn't so lucky. A client called, apoplectic, because I had written in one text that Allgäu was in Switzerland. And my quip failed utterly to make her laugh.

Yes, I now know it's not in Switzerland. But gimme a break, willya? I'm American. We're not supposed to know anything about geography.