Chartered Institute of Linguists

This page contains the following 2012 newsletter:

The Newsletter of the Chartered Institute of Linguists
German Society e.V.

From the Chairman:

Back at work already on 2nd January, so getting quickly into the swing of this New Year. The weather doesn't actually encourage getting out and about, so it is more pleasant to stay in and start writing this Chairman's Message. The rest of the Committee are busy too, and we are already working hard on two major events for 2012.

First of all the AGM, which is being held in Hanover on 25th February. Ursula and Brian Rouvray have found us a nice-looking venue quite close to the main station, the Maestro Gastronomie im Künstlerhaus. It seems to be a beautiful building and a real cultural centre. The meeting should be interesting as both the Chairman and the Vice-Chair are being newly elected. After the AGM and lunch we can enjoy the rest of the afternoon visiting some of the excellent museums suggested by Ursula and Brian, who would also be happy to guide us around the Altstadt and up the Rathaus for an excellent view of the city.

The second event, being tenaciously forged into being by our Turin-born Munich member, Guglielmo Fittante, is the Autumn Study Weekend in Brixen, South Tyrol, from 5th to 7th October. A keynote speaker will be introducing us to one of the oldest native languages of the Alpine region, Ladin. Intercomprehension and plurilingualism will also be featuring among the topics. This intellectual fare will be leavened by the excellent wines of the region. Basic information is given on p.8, along with a pointer to more exhaustive and updated details on our Website.

I didn't manage to attend the Frankfurt Translators' Workshop on 19th November but I heard first hand that it was as good as the previous year's, if not even better. We seem to have rescued our workshop format from the previous threatened stagnation and turned it into a highly viable event. Margaret Collier's report is on p.3.

Those are our starting points for the year, so please come in great numbers to the AGM and help elaborate them further.

All the best from me and the Committee.

Website Opt-in List request

This is the second mass appeal for CIoL-GS members to join the Opt-in list. The main reasoning and ideas behind the Opt-in list are on the Opt-in request form.

I have re-designed the CIoL-GS website http://ciol-gs.de slightly and the Main Page now has more direct links to other pages in the website including the Opt-in List: see copy of new entry from the CIoL-GS Website Main Page below:

To FIND a member of the CIoL-GS go to the links page and look at the Opt-in list http://ciol-gs.de/page14.php. This is a recent endeavour and by no means complete - still waiting (hoping) for more members to opt in.

Since my last appeal the number of GS members who have opted into the Opt-in List has risen to 43, showing three main Germany-based groups in Bavaria, Hessen and North Rhine Westphalia. We also have GS members who have so far opted in from other countries such as England, Luxembourg and Switzerland, in addition to countries as far-flung as the Gambia and Australia.

In total there are about 210 CIol-GS members, so that means that about 20% have already opted in. The list is called the Opt-in list to assure members that they will only be added if they wish to be added. If members do not wish to be added they will not be added. Alternatively, if members on the list wish to be removed they will be removed.

For this second appeal GS members who receive the newsletter by post should have found an Opt-in list request form with the newsletter. GS members who receive the newsletter by e-mail and have so far not opted in should have already received an e-mail from me with the request form.

It is hoped that the Opt-in list will increase so as to give a better rough picture of where members of the CIoL-GS are for better communication, hence this second appeal for more GS members to opt in.

Webmaster – Norman Ellis

Joy Buchanan in The Gambia - Every little helps.

My work in The Gambia continues to evolve and keeps me busy. The nursery school in Ghanatown, a Ghanaian fishing village, will soon have a kitchen, then cooking utensils, then hopefully some food for the children. Teachers have been sent to teachers' training college and a few people are receiving token pay as auxiliary staff. The big changes will come when the school receives electricity and water. I have registered my own charity called “Better Community Association” and I have received donations that will pay for the construction of temporary corrugated classrooms for primary school children, cardboard ceilings to reduce heat in the rooms, perhaps some bicycles, cleaning fluids, mops and buckets. There is great need everywhere, and there are other schools that need attention. Families are often in need of food, e.g. a bag of rice or sugar, and sponsors to help their children through school. Life is a rich tapestry with “ram jams” before the Tobaski festival and fresh peanuts on the market now the mangos are finished. The rain has stopped, the tourist season has started and the 660 species of birds will mostly disappear from sight as they find water elsewhere.

(This report was written last November. Ed.)

Translators' workshop in Frankfurt am Main

November is perhaps not the pleasantest of months, and the Galluswarte is perhaps not the most attractive part of Frankfurt, but the annual gathering for the joint CIOL/BDÜ workshop is nonetheless guaranteed to generate a small oasis of warmth, good humour, and a bubbling fount of professionally useful links, resources, publications, and people.

Despite a slightly lower turn-out than usual, this year’s get-together once again proved to be most convivial. There were new faces amongst the ‘old’, and the range of topics covered reflected the diversity of the areas of specialism and interest of those present.

Barbara Müller-Grant got things off to a lively and humorous start, involving much audience participation, by presenting her list of personal pet-hates and bugbears from the realm of the misuse of English, and of punctuation in particular. In no time at all we were, of course, all bemoaning the so-called ‘grocer’s apostrophe’ (as in “Tomato’s [or better yet: Tomatoes’] - 35 p./lb”) and contributing our own personal ‘worst-ever’ examples. Opinions varied on the best way of dealing with the possessive version of names such as James and Russ, and pause for thought was prompted by contemplation of the gradual and inevitable disappearance of the hyphen in neologisms as they become fully integrated into the language (examples being week-end and e-mail). The importance of the adjective-forming function of the hyphen (my usage right here being a case in point…!) was neatly illustrated by the example (provided by Sally Lamm from past teaching experience) of the “man eating cucumber sandwiches” as opposed to the “man-eating tiger”.

The old chestnut “Impressum” was chewed over for the zillionth time. Having, personally, been utterly convinced that “imprint” is never the correct translation, I was moved to do a little more research following the event and discovered that the word is indeed used, in the context of publishing, to refer to the publisher’s and/or printer’s details, date of publication, etc. in printed matter. But that only reinforces my conviction that it is quite inappropriate in the position where it is most frequently seen these days: namely, on the English versions of German websites. The consensus of those gathered at the workshop was that “Legal notes” and/or “Legal disclaimer” is probably the most helpful way of dealing with “Impressum” in that context.

Barbara went on to throw another ‘hot potato’ into the ring for discussion: the issue of gender neutrality. It was acknowledged that the awkward “his/her” and “(s)he” can often be avoided by making the protagonists plural. But for those seeking more elaborate solutions to the problem, Barbara recommended a publication from the British Columbia Law Institute: a slim tome (16 pages) entitled “Gender-free legal writing: managing the personal pronouns” was published in 1998 under ISBN 1894278011, 9781894278010.

The first presentation was brought to a close with a painful dip into “Beratersprech”. The campaigner who has brought this lamentable development into the spotlight is journalist Tom Hillenbrand. On the website he maintains (Beratersprech.de) you can relish at your leisure the pain of real-life quotes such as this little gem:

"Wenn der CEO keine Guidance gibt, ist die Equity Story hinüber. Dann muss ein Capex-Holiday das Ebit-Target sichern, möglichst mit ein bisschen cream on top."

The examples on the website (apparently updated daily) are so awful, they couldn’t possibly be made up!

Our next presenter took us into a decidedly less amusing and – for most of us, I’m sure – far more alien field: that of data and statistical analysis. The title of the presentation was a little misleading, in fact, alluding as it did to “the translation of maths”. I think we might have benefited from a more general introduction to the conceptual environment before Rafaela Bielecki-Weyenberg took us through examples of the types of terminology encountered when dealing with the statistics involved in “predictive” areas such as clinical trials in medical research, or the conducting of risk assessment in the field of banking and finance, where “interferential statistics” are applied to test hypotheses (in layman’s terms: what are the chances that the client will repay the debt?).

Rafaela introduced us to a concept of “scorecards” away from the gaming table or the bingo hall. Topical indeed, since banks apparently use programs known as scorecards to compute the probability of default. Wikipedia confirms that “The scorecard is a statistically based model for attributing a number (score) to a customer (or an account) which indicates the predicted probability that the customer will exhibit a certain behaviour”. Woe betide those customers who are allotted nul points…..

For those who might have found this a somewhat ‘dry’ field of exploration, relief was at hand – a convivial lunch in the Greek/Italian restaurant in the same building allowed us to contemplate the predicted probability of our allowing epicurean behaviour to prevail and thus indulge in a glass of wine with our pasta (well, it was Saturday, after all…).

Returning fortified to the seminar room, we found a highly original occupant of the dreaded post-lunchtime ‘graveyard slot’. Renate Ray-Klößmann infected us with her enthusiasm for a book dating from the socially significant year of 1968, namely The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B by the Irish-American author J.P. Donleavy. She had selected an extract of several pages which consisted chiefly of dialogue, so a couple of those present who could claim a certain authenticity of accent (to wit, Sally Lamm and Enda Pendred, the latter attending a workshop for the first time), duly delivered some very amusing text ‘live’. Renate had copies of the equivalent pages of the German translation of the novel, so we were then able to debate how successful the brave translator had been in conveying dialogue and scenes from pre-war Ireland, rendered in short, idiomatic phrases, which were frequently fragmented and totally ungrammatical.

It was a most interesting dip into a very different type of translation, and a notable introduction to a work that some of us might have heard of, but would probably never have considered reading. I am duly reminded that I need to ensure the novel stays on my list of books to look out for in the near future…...

Sally took the stage again, once we’d finished chewing over the translated Irishisms, this time to share with us her musings on that frightfully British word “sorry”. It was fascinating to consider the number of ways it can indeed be used – with a plethora of different implied meanings, each of which would be rendered by a different word or expression in German (e.g. not having heard something/expressing sympathy/expressing regret/a formal apology/making amends for bad behaviour etc. etc.). And it was noted that latterly it also seems to have become a bit of a ‘cool’ way for Germans to express what always used to be “Oh – pardon!”

Last but by no means least in the day’s offerings were Helga Schüll-Gasteyer’s insights into the problems inherent in translating company-law texts, with reference in particular to recent changes as a result of the Gesetz zur Modernisierung des GmbH-Rechts which came into force at the end of 2008. The main aim of the amended law is to simplify the formation of a GmbH, and she brought a standard Gesellschaftsvertrag with its translation (i.e. the Articles of Association) as a basis for discussion. And of that there was

a good deal, as it became clear that this family of terminology has cropped up in almost every translator’s source text at one time or other - and “legal” tends to make people nervous. A particularly hot topic was the use of the problematic prescriptive sense of “shall”, and it was generally agreed that the modern tendency amongst English law-firms seems to be to move away from it, using “must” or “have to” instead in the interests of error-avoidance. An understandable development, perhaps, not least since so many English legal texts are drafted by non-native speakers these days.

Those of us who were not in a hurry to leave adjourned for some more informal conversation over a well-earned sun-downer in the restaurant, and we finally went our various ways with much useful and stimulating shared knowledge to ponder, thanks to our colleagues’ varied and laudable contributions.

Margaret Collier

The Editor's Rag Bag

Sincere apologies to Nicola Hayton, one of the speakers at last year's study weekend in Heidelberg, for omitting to mention in the write-up of the event that Nicola is President of the local branch of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and was speaking in this capacity.

Our good wishes to chairman Mike with the Institute exam he is taking this month.

And thanks to Paul Wood for his suggestion regarding the term 'Kurschatten', mentioned in the AT report in the last newsletter. He puts forward 'resort escort' as a possible in English. Any other ideas?

The grocer's apostrophe

Reproduced by kind permission of author Janice Booth, this limerick appearing in the Winter 2011 issue of Quest, the journal of The Queen's English Society (QES):

A greengrocer proud of his biz

Claims his pea's, bean's and spud's are a whizz.

Enquired: "Is that proper?"

He firmly replied: "Ye's it i's."

This notice spotted on a tree in a genteel street in Epsom: 'Please do not allow your dog to FOWL the verge. Please remove it.' What, the dog, the verge, or the howler (or should that be houler??)?.

And finally, thanks to Margaret Collier for the translation guide on the following page!

Anglo-EU Translation Guide

What the British say What the British mean What others understand

I hear what you say I disagree and do not want He accepts my point of to

discuss it further view

With the greatest I think you are an idiot He is listening to me

That’s not bad That’s good That’s poor

That’s a brave proposal You are insane He thinks I have courage

Quite good A bit disappointing Quite good

I would suggest Do it or be prepared to Think about the idea, but

justify yourself do what you like

Oh, incidentally/by the The primary purpose of It doesn’t really matter

Way our discussion is …

I was a bit disappointed I am annoyed that It doesn’t really matter

Very interesting This is clearly nonsense They are impressed

I’ll bear that in mind I’ve forgotten already They will probably do it

I’m sure it’s my fault It’s your fault Why do they think it was

You must come for dinner It is not an invitation, I’m I will get an invitation

only being polite soon

I almost agree I don’t agree at all He’s not far from

I only have a few minor Please rewrite completely He has found a few typos

Could we consider some I don’t like your idea They have not yet decided

Chartered Institute of Linguists German Society e.V.

Annual General Meeting 2012

Saturday, 25th February 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.

Restaurant Maestro

Gastronomie im Künstlerhaus

1. Apologies for absence

2. Approval of the agenda

3. Approval of the minutes of the 2011 AGM

4. Chairman’s report

5. Treasurer’s report

6. Formal approval by the membership of the committee’s actions

7. Formal approval by the membership of the Hon. Treasurer’s actions

8. Election of committee members (Hon. Treasurer and Secretary)

9. Extraordinary election of committee members (Chair and Vice Chair)

10. Study weekend 2012 Brixen

11. Other future events

14. Date and place of next meeting

In order to give an idea of numbers, would members wishing to attend please let the Hon. Secretary know by email (translations@gmatthey.de), equally apologies for absence.

Link to meeting place incl. sketch map

25 February 2012

German Society's AGM, Hanover. For full details, see p. 7.

Anglophoner Tag in Bonn, organised by Aticom

28 – 30 September 2012

Second international BDÜ conference in Berlin.

5 – 7 October 2012

GS study weekend in Brixen (Bressanone). Guglielmo Fittante is pressing ahead with planning for this event, and in addition to Prof. Doyé (already mentioned) has engaged the Director of the Istitut Ladin to give a talk. Rhaeto-Romanic, or Ladin, is one of the oldest European languages and is spoken in nearby valleys. Guglielmo is also in the process of negotiating with other potential speakers. There will be a guided tour of nearby Kloster Neustift abbey followed by a wine tasting on the Saturday afternoon, and a guided tour of the town on the Sunday morning.

Brixen is three and a half hours by train from Munich, 45 minutes by shuttle services from Innsbruck, and also fairly easily reached from Verona airport.

The planned venue for the event, including accommodation, is Haus St. Georg, just outside Brixen and on a daytime bus route. See http:// www.cusanus.bz.it/de/cusanus-akademie/haus-st-georg-sarns.asp. An overnight stay would cost under €40. Interested parties are requested to contact Guglielmo as soon as possible, ideally by the end of January, at gfittante@yahoo.com. See also the Information Page of our website for regular updates.

10 – 14 October 2012

Frankfurt Book Fair. This year's special guest is New Zealand