Transblawg

Heinz face anger over 58th variety, writes William Green in the Austrian Times.

Surely this is naive? I remember over twenty years ago being annoyed when I discovered that Cadbury's chocolate sold in Germany had more sugar than the British kind.

Another taster Kathryn Quinn, 25, from Cumbria that now lives in Vienna said: "I lived off beans at University in Birmingham but the beans here taste horrible. It's a shame as they were cheap and good for you. It's just as well I can afford something better from the local cooking here."

According to the Heinz labels the British tin is more than half full with beans - while the Austrian version contains less than half.

And the British beans have five per cent more tomato in their sauce than the Austrians who have more water, sugar and salt instead.

(Tweeted by Bob Kerns)

Bianca Jagger lost a valuable ring in Austria. Austrian law requires that the finder be paid 5% of the value of the ring (German law has a similar provision). The finder has taken her to court in Salzburg for slander - she said that he handed in the ring far too late (8 days after it was announced in the press, before which time he thought the ring was worthless). After this civil case, it will be clear whether the finder's reward is to be paid. It would be 10,000 euros.

Jagger, a human rights activist, made an alternative offer in November to pay 9,000 euros to Amnesty International and the remaining 1,000 euros to Ringler's daughter, according to her Austrian lawyer Gabriel Lansky.

But negotiations between the parties failed.

The civil suit will go to court on May 4. If Jagger loses, she will have to pay 19,000 euros, including court and lawyers' fees.

In the US, finder's fee usually refers to a commission agreed to be paid for introducing businesses and customers.

Süddeutsche Zeitung report

AFP report

BBC article on Oetzi (the iceman)

(Via Handakte WebLAWg)

Riccardo Schiaffino, who doesn't speak German, comments on a visit to Vienna in Saving a few dimes while spending a ton.

At the Leopold Museum's show on the Vienna art scene up to 1918 the English translation of a note on the origins of WW I said the Sarajevo assassination was due to the ultimatum issued from Austria to Serbia.

Since the ultimatum of course followed the assassination, either the German original was strangely wrong or the translator had a shaky knowledge of modern history.

At the Belvedere, in the show celebrating Gustav Klimt and the Kunstschau 1908, the English legend under a costume design by Emil Orlik said it was "a design for Shakespeare's 'Das Wintermärchen'". That is, the English label gave Shakespeare's title in German. The correct translation should have been "a costume design for Shakespeare's The Winter Tale", or perhaps "... for a German staging of the Winter Tale".

This isn't purely a Viennese problem. I recall the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg always had the most dreadful English in their exhibitions, on the level of 'why bother with a translation at all?' I haven't been to an exhibition recently, though.

The Christkindlsmarkt in Nuremberg has a very narrow range of stalls. Good if you want to sell prune men, straw stars or wooden toys. This stall seems to break the rules and kowtow to commercialism.

A group of Americans spotted it with cries of 'Knut!' - obviously not realizing this is Flaky Bear.

Having today already been confronted with 'Sehr geehrte Kolleginnen und Kollegen' addressed to persons outside Germany, I am wondering about 'Mit kollegialen Grüßen', but that's easy: 'Yours sincerely' (at least in British English).

Michael Kadlicz in Wiener Neustadt - is that still Vienna? - received this from a fellow-lawyer:

Sehr geehrter Herr Kollege Mag. Kadlicz!

Aufgrund eines bedauerlichen Versehens habe ich bemerkt, dass in der letzten Nachricht in der Schlussformel das Wort "kollegiale" Grüße nicht aufgenommen war. Ich bitte dieses Versehen höflich zu entschuldigen, wie Sie mich ja bereits kennen, bringe ich Ihnen selbstverständlich die volle kollegiale Wertschätzung entgegen.

Ich zeichne mit
freundlichen kollegialen Grüßen

Not really translatable, I'm afraid.

If I were registered to comment at twoday.net, I would comment on the first sentence. Is it the regrettable oversight that the writer noticed his omission? Translators tend to correct this kind of thing.

I love the firm's website - must have changed since I last saw it. Blog.

The Canadian multi-law-student weblog Law is Cool has discovered Leoben prison - already mentioned.

Since it was opened in March 2005 it has often been in the press, and has led to indignation among non-inmates.

The blogger, Lawrence Gridin, is restricted to online machine translation and invites comments from German speakers on this page. I quote the original German of the Kronen Zeitung from here.

Angeboten wird auch ein "Langzeitbesuch" - wobei sich ein Häftling maximal 24 Stunden lang mit Partner oder Familie in einem Raum ungestört aufhalten kann - was bereits für heiße Diskussionen sorgte.

Also a “long-term visit” is offered - whereby a prisoner can be maximally 24 hours long with partner or family in an area unimpaired - which already provided for hot discussions.

Von den Lebensumständen, die die Fotos vermitteln, kann das Gros der Bevölkerung wohl nur träumen: Ein Wuzzler im Aufenthaltsraum neben einem großen Fernseher, eine herrliche Sporthalle, ein piekfeiner Trainingsraum mit glänzenden Fitnessgeräten - und ein verträumter Blick in die grüne Landschaft neben Korbsessel und Palme. Die Luft ist allerdings "gesiebt".

Of the life circumstances, which obtain the photos, the majority of the population can probably only dream: A Wuzzler in the lounge beside a large television, a wonderful sport-resounds, a piekfeiner training area with shining Fitnessgeräten - and a verträumter view into the green landscape beside basket armchair and palm. Air is however “gesiebt”.

Actually, the main drift comes over quite well.

As usual, if one had an MT program oneself, one could tell it that Manfred Gieß is a name, and then it would not write 'Manfred pour'.

Unknown words are not translated. Hence the strained joke about 'at least the air is filtered before it is allowed in' is omitted. HÄf'n (slang for prison) and Wuzzler (table football) are terms that would need to be fed in.

I am surprised at 'sport-resounds' for Sporthalle.

Justizanstalt Leoben website (German)

Thanks to Ed. at Blawg Review for the tip-off.

Rechtsanwalt Jens Hänsch, Dresden, compared part of an Austrian judgment he received with its German equivalent. I shamelessly reproduce both:

Was in Deutschland hieße

1. Der Beklagte wird verurteilt, an die Klägerin 1.144,50 Euro zuzüglich Zinsen in Höhe von 9,47 % seit dem 10.04.2006 zu zahlen.
2. Der Beklagte hat die Kosten des Rechtsstreits zu tragen.
3. Das Urteil ist vorläufig vollstreckbar.

heißt Im Namen der Republik wie folgt:

Die beklagte Partei ist schuldig, der klagenden Partei den Betrag von € 1.144,50 samt Zinsen in Höhe von 9,47 % seit 10.04.2006 sowie die Prozesskosten gemäß § 19a RAO zu Handen der Klagsvertreter zu bezahlen, all dies binnen 14 Tagen bei sonstiger Exekution.

At least they didn't write 'samt Anhang'!

On this topic, I do wish people asking questions on translators' mailing lists would say if their text is German, Swiss or Austrian and if their audience is specifically British, American or global.

In Klagenfurt, The Sun has spotted a Croatia fan without a flag ('We find wanted Nazi at footie').

Milivoj Asner is on the listed of wanted war criminals, but is not extradited on health grounds. It's not clear whether or not he is an Austrian citizen.

Der Standard:

Für die österreichische Justiz, für die der heute 95-Jährige als "schwer dement" und vernehmungs- und prozessunfähig gilt, kann Ašner daher nicht an Kroatien ausgeliefert werden, das ihm den Prozess machen möchte. Ašner, der als Chef der kroatischen Ustascha-Polizei in Pozega für die Deportation Tausender Juden, Roma und Serben in Konzentrationslager verantwortlich sein soll, steht seit langem auf der Liste der meistgesuchten NS-Verbrecher des Simon Wiesenthal-Centers, das nach dem Sun-Bericht nun von Österreich die Auslieferung Ašners an Kroatien verlangt.

Der Standard: the list.

LATER NOTE: for another entry on the same topic in the Datenschutz-Blog.
(I'm not sure why html doesn't work in my comments - must look into tit).

In November each year, since 2002, 100,000 free copies of a book have been distributed in Vienna. Eine STADT ein BUCH. (English)

In 2007, looking forward to 2008, Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch was chosen, which fits in with the Euro 2008 Football Championship in Austria and Switzerland.

3SAT had a half-hour program on the book. We saw Nick Hornby reading in English.

But who did the German translation?

None of those people would have read the book if it hadn't been translated into German. So I thought I would do a search and name the translator. But I can't find the name anywhere.

Books to date (Wikipedia):

2002 - Frederic Morton: Ewigkeitsgasse
Frederic Morton ist ein im Jahre 1924 in Wien geborener Schriftsteller. Er beschrieb in seinem Roman „Ewigkeitsgasse“ das Leben einer jüdischen Familie in einer fiktiven Gegend in Wien

2003 - Imre Kertész: Schritt für Schritt.
Dieses Buch ist eigentlich ein Drehbuch zum Roman eines Schicksallosen, für den Kertész den Nobelpreis für Literatur erhielt

2004 - Johannes Mario Simmel: Das geheime Brot
Johannes Mario Simmel wurde 1924 in Wien geboren. Schauplatz seines 1950 erschienenen Romans „Das geheime Brot“ ist das Wien der Nachkriegszeit, wo Simmel damals als Kulturredakteur tätig war.

2005 - John Irving: Laßt die Bären los!
John Irving studierte in den Jahren 1962 bis 1963 in Wien und begann hier seinen ersten Roman „Laßt die Bären los!“ (Originaltitel: Setting Free the Bears).

2006 - Toni Morrison: Sehr blaue Augen
Die afroamerikanische Literaturnobelpreisträgerin Toni Morrison schrieb 1970 ihren ersten Roman: „Sehr blaue Augen“ (Originaltitel: The Bluest Eye). Er handelt vom Schicksal eines schwarzen Mädchens in den USA der 1940er Jahre.

2007 – Nick Hornby: Fever Pitch
Nick Hornbys Debütroman über einen Fußballfan wurde als Vorbote der in Österreich und der Schweiz stattfindenden Fußball-Europameisterschaft 2008 ausgewählt.

LATER NOTE: The translators of Fever Pitch are Marcus Geiss and Henning Stegelmann - thanks to hp lehofer in the comments.

In the Times Literary Supplement of May 16 2008, Ritchie Robertson searches Austrian literature for examples of men who terrorized or imprisoned their families. The article is available online too.

Adalbert Stifter: Turmalin 1852
Franz Nabl: Das Grab des Lebendigen 1917 - later reissued as Die Ortliebschen Frauen
Ferdnand Raimund: Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind 1828
Johann Nestroy: Eine Wohnung ist zu vermeten in der Stadt 1837
Elias Canetti: Die Blendung 1935
Veza Canetti: Die gelbe Straße 1932-3

Robertson finds that John Fowles's The Collector has more to do with class, whereas the Austrian examples relate to the father's Züchtigungsrecht - right to chastise his family. He finishes by finding that some of Freud's famous cases were surprisingly soft on the fathers and insensitive to the mothers.

1. Henkel Fan Guide für Wien auf Weanerisch/Deutsch/English
1st German/English Henkel Fan Guide for Vienna in “Weanerisch“

You can download a PDF file and listen to an audio file of Viennese expressions (followed by High German and English) for the European Football Championships.

Football fans will be accompanied through Vienna in 21 different scenes – from their arrival, searching for a hotel and cheering on their favourite team at the stadium to eating at the hot dog stand, flirting and departing the city. Each scene contains ten suitable expressions in Viennese, German and English, as well as a caricature drawn by the artist Hans Gramm.

Judging from the audio file, I would advise against using the English expressions to encourage a team. They are correct translations of the original, but they lack a certain elan.

Now, can we find something for Switzerland too? Reader's Edition has a bit - here's the beginning:

Die Vokabeln

Stadion - Stadion
Stadionkasse - Kassä
Stadioneingang - Stadioniigang
Tribüne - Tribünä
Sitzplatz - Sitzplatz
Fußballrasen - Fuässballrasä
Anstoß - Astoss
Viererkette - Viererchetti

(Via Übersetzerportal)

This Austrian case was reported in Times Online today and has appeared all over the world:

But new ground was broken recently when the Supreme Court of Austria was asked to rule that Matthew Hiasl Pan is a person. That sounds easy enough for even an inexperienced lawyer. But the challenge was that Matthew is a chimpanzee.

An animal-rights group, VGT, had tried to have Matthew declared a person so that a lawyer could be appointed as his guardian when the shelter where the chimp had lived for 25 years closed. Donors had raised money for the chimp, but under Austrian law, only a person may benefit from a scheme such as VGT proposed.

The case failed at first instance and has now been either rejected or dismissed by the Austrian Supreme Court of Justice (English site). It sounds as if the plaintiff may take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.

When I was trying to research the credentials of this story, I had trouble finding Austrian sources. No wonder: of course his name is not Matthew, but Matthias.

Here we are, on the site of the Verein gegen Tierfabriken (the plaintiff):

Anfang Februar 2007 hatte der Obmann des Verein Gegen Tierfabriken VGT für den Schimpansen Matthias „Hiasl“ Pan, seinen persönlichen Freund, am zuständigen Bezirksgericht Mödling einen Sachwalter beantragt. Hiasl war illegal nach Österreich entführt worden, um hier für Tierversuche verwendet zu werden. Er fand Zuflucht im Wiener Tierschutzhaus. Durch die finanziellen Probleme des WTV mit Abschiebung bedroht, beantragte der VGT-Obmann die Besachwalterung, sodass Hiasl in seinem eigenen Interesse gerichtlich agieren und z.B. eine Abschiebung juridisch bekämpfen kann. Der Antrag wurde von 4 international anerkannten Fachleuten und Universitätsprofessoren in Biologie, Anthropologie und Rechtskunde durch Expertisen unterstützt.

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, he may not be a human being, but there's no call to translate a proper name! Otherwise we would hear more about Canute and Socken. (I gather some Nurembergers recently read an article in a Canadian paper headed 'Her name is Flake').

LATER NOTE: See comment - the question as to whether a chimpanzee could be treated as a human in this context was not even dealt with - what was important was that the applicant had no right to have a guardian appointed for another person. Here's the OGH decision.

I sometimes look at The Glory of Carniola - I'm particularly fond of the photo on the opening page - and now there is a nice entry explaining why there is so much burglary in Austria: it's because the prisons are so comfortable and well-appointed:

Hell, I live just a few kilometers from the border and I’m seriously considering heading over there this weekend and doing some serious damage. What’s the worst that can happen? Either I come back with a new kick-ass flat-screen television or they send me to some place like the Justice Center Leoben and I get a few months of all-inclusive paid vacation. It’s win-win!

(Via Ingmar at aktenvermerk)

Heidemarie Markhardt, who has been mentioned here before, has just published a dictionary of Austrian legal, economics and administrative terminology:

Heidemarie Markhardt, Wörterbuch der österreichischen Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsterminologie, Peter Lang Verlag, ISBN 3 631 55247 5 amazon.de

Sample page:
Download file

This will be of interest to anyone translating Austrian texts in this area. Despite the fact that (or perhaps because) many Austrian sites have English sections (a search on this weblog will reveal a number of earlier articles on Austrian law in English), it is still a slow business pinning down the terminology and then finding perhaps the German or French equivalent preparatory to translating it into English. This dictionary gives definitions and, where applicable, 'standard' German equivalents.

In 1993, Heidemarie Markhardt produced an internal EU glossary with c. 1200 entries and examples of collocations (unpublished) and in 2005 she published a book on Austrian terminology in 2005 (see earlier entry). (earlier entry).

The Wörterbuch contains Austrian legal terms, such as laesio enormis, Krida, Fahrnisexekution, Ausgedinge, Erbsentschlagung, Einlauf, including adjectives such as allfällig and taxativ (the latter in a combination). There are also many terms from Austrian government (Austrian terminology cannot be reduced to Lungenbraten and Ribisl) There are Austrian synonyms as well as German equivalents. I am not sure how many entries there are, but possibly over 1500.

There is a brief introduction to the problems of Austrian English and German as a pluricentric language (spoken in Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Austrian, Belgium, Italian and Switzerland) and a short bibliography at the beginning.

Frau Markhardt notes in the introduction that, for example, the word Abfertigung is a common Austrian term but is not found in bilingual legal dictionaries. I checked for myself: it is not in Dietl, Romain or von Beseler in this meaning. It is in Herbst, for once, but not very clearly explained: abfertigen can mean 'to pay off an employee' and Abfertigung can mean '(Abfindung), indemnity, compensation'. It is in Russwurm, explained in German, of course. It is in Doucet-Fleck, into French. It is on the EMIRE website, which has quite a lot on Austrian labour law, but only in English, with the German words in brackets (Google site search should help here). It may be in other dictionaries, but I haven't looked.

I haven't spent long looking at the dictionary, but one thing I would have liked to see in some cases is the naming of the legislation where a term originates. This is sometimes given. For example, for the term Abfertigung Neu, the Neuregelung is given a date (1.1.2003), but the statute is not named. When I translate a term like this, I always try to pin it down first (it was introduced by the Betriebliches Mitarbeitervorsorgegesetz (BMVG)).

However, this dictionary will be a first port of call in future for unfamiliar Austrian terms. It fills a big gap.