World Cup Donuts for Germany

This is my kind of (coffee and) kuchen. US-style donuts covered with ice-cream sprinkles to help get into the spirit of things during the World Cup in 2010. I begged the Hamburg woman behind the counter at the Langenhorn-Markt U-Bahn station to allow me to take her picture - she had hash-marked her cheeks with Red, Yellow and Black for Germany. She finally allowed me a couple days later. But I think the donuts are the hit. Germany finished in 3rd place again after going far in 2006. Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira impressed, even wowed audiences, and Bastian Schweinsteiger and Miroslav Klose also were stalwart producers. The way they romped past England and Argentina capture the hearts of many fans the world over.

Part of a quote is not always enough

The failure of the press to correctly quote and correctly translate a portion of an interview with German President Horst Köhler in its original context has put the press on thin ice. An interview with President Horst Köhler was recently translated into slightly simplified form from the German, leaving out key contextual signals. Given how easy it is to get complete information nowadays, this is unprofessional and too lax. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/europe/01germany.html
Here is the quoted statement made by President Köhler in an interview on May 21 or May 22 on his way back from visiting German troops in Afghanistan.

He was speaking in general terms, no longer about Afghanistan specifically. He had already expressed his support for the troops and said they were there to ensure the security of Germany. What followed this was what the German press jumped on and distorted:

"Meine Einschätzung ist aber, dass insgesamt wir auf dem Wege sind, doch auch in der Breite der Gesellschaft zu verstehen, dass ein Land unserer Größe mit dieser Außenhandelsorientierung und damit auch Außenhandelsabhängigkeit auch wissen muss, dass im Zweifel, im Notfall auch militärischer Einsatz notwendig ist, um unsere Interessen zu wahren, zum Beispiel freie Handelswege, zum Beispiel ganze regionale Instabilitäten zu verhindern, die mit Sicherheit dann auch auf unsere Chancen zurückschlagen negativ durch Handel, Arbeitsplätze und Einkommen. Alles das soll diskutiert werden und ich glaube, wir sind auf einem nicht so schlechten Weg."

"My assessment however is that in general we are moving toward [the realization], in fact coming to understand throughout society, that a country of our size with its focus on foreign trade and thus also dependence on foreign trade, also must know that in case of doubt, in an emergency, military action is necessary in order to safeguard our interests, for example [keeping] trade routes free, for example preventing regional instabilities, which are certain to have a negative impact on trade, jobs, and income. This should all be discussed and I think the start we have made is not bad.” (my translation)

That is the complete version, with the omitted portions in bold. A bungled and shortened version of his statement is reported by the New York Times with all things apparently up to standard today, meaning they multiplied the misrepresentation. Here is the NY Times version, available as the full story at the beginning of this post:

“A country of our size,” he said, “with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.”

This version omits the previous sentence that people across society are coming to this realization, so the New York Time makes it sound like "people have to 'get it' and gain this awareness." That is grossly unfair. Especially if journalists repeat a mistake again in translation by not doing their homework. President Köhler was fulfilling his job and speaking in broad strokes, his only option for having an impact since his office enjoys no executive powers.

Now people are saying he was insulted. I beg to differ, he was more than insulted, he was made a target and misrepresented in a "soft blow" "hatchet job." This is a proven method of look-away mobbing and his response to silent mobbing while in office was appropriate, because his person and his high office were each maligned by "sins of omission."

I will remember his courage and feeling for others, on the Winnenden shootings, on the monstrous visage of short-term profiteering, which he decried in the most unequivocal terms and his deep interest in the destiny and circumstances of many people in Germany and especially Africa.

It seems a bit oversimplified for Germany's ARD to claim that Germans "don't understand" his resignation - the ease with which a publicly-financed broadcaster feels called upon to say what Germans think and pretend to be able to gauge this, even before it has sunk in, amounts to arrogance and presumptuousness. Even when their air time is paid for by the people, ARD has overstepped professional tenets and standards.

Teamgeist or esprit de corps

Given the calamity occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, it is striking how the entire group of upstream mineral oil producing companies have not created a pool of funds to unleash an unprecedented effort to contain and alleviate the damage. OPEC should not stand by, but send 5 representatives to stand with President Obama and the governors and commit to a clean-up.

In addition they ought to finance a people-controlled/grassroots-represented containment and de-escalation team with full spending power matching 1 percent of the affected coastal region's budget and a local draft of volunteers and this amount matched by double this amount from Big Oil - the teams to be staffed, 50 percent by oil company managers who are answerable to the other 50 percent who are non-oil-company representatives from affected local communities.

Shifts could be handled like on the North Slope. 2 weeks on - 2 weeks off, with one day set aside for briefing/debriefing between team shifts.

"Machines don't get irony"

"The text with a gold-colored background here," explains Willer, "was already translated and edited last year, so today the customer doesn't have to pay for it anymore."

"Eine Maschine versteht keine Ironie" - taz.de: "'Was hier golden unterlegt ist', erklärt Willer, 'wurde bereits im Vorjahr übersetzt und editiert, dafür braucht mein Kunde heute nicht mehr zu bezahlen.'"

Who decides if a piece of work should be left out or included and thus billed for. It should be the service provider who decides if they feel text repetitions should be charged at a lower rate, if justified. the alternative is accepting these terms as dicatated by the customer.

But when customers start pressuring you to come down in price for matches and repetitions (a match is simply a later repetition), not only does the amount you earn decrease, but a gap is created between what you do and what you are paid. If the number of repetitions saves you 25% of the work, you can bet that the agency wants a 50% discount. So you end up doing more work for the same price. The only other option is an unprofessional one: translating disconnected sentences which are not yet in the database and not spending even a half a second reading from one sentence to the next. That is an approach which is reckless and runs counter to how texts should be skillfully dealt with during translation. It can be likened to a surgeon saying she doesn't need glasses, after all that ear is on the left side of the patient's head, since she knows where it is, she commands: "Scalpel." and lops it off. Oh, I'm sorry, it was the next person's ear!! Not to worry, I have malpractice insurance for that. Translators can say: "Oh, I have liability insurance for financial loss," I'll accept those terms (ha, ha, life is fun!). A gross and insanely absurd analogy which has a pithy logical core. Do you care about your patient, do you care about your text? The texts my colleagues translate are often for heavy machinery with high voltage and potentially dangerous situations can arise from incorrect translation. Anyone who voluntarily places others at potential risk while also jeopardizing their own reputation by agreeing to "blind" fuzzy-match-only translations is taking an uncalled for risk. In some cases a proofreader makes sense, but with fuzzy matches being blindly accepted, a proofreader is then forced to use production resources to fix things you as as the translator could have done right in the first place.

It is not the marketing damage large institutions inflict upon themselves when making bad decisions about translations. This is systemic. The problems with "Fluggastkontrolle" (airline passenger "control") being rendered as "passenger control" is not the question here, though embarassing enough for Munich's Airport when they closed it down and the unchecked and very translated sounding phrase "passenger control" is shown to millions and millsion on all the German TV stations and international stations, too. No.... this issue goes deeper than that.

So, try to avoid agents who allow customers to force this on them. And end-customers, you are risking things... Discourage dialogs about repetitions and fuzzy match discounts. You decide that, not them, for your expertise is required for a successful processing/translating of the patient/text.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, except for maybe in the translation industry when critical sentences in a new manual don't get paid for - the customer/agent gets the free lunch, but uses the sentence for monetary gain in a transaction--publishing the content or selling it as a manual with a system or piece of potentially dangerous equipment. What bookseller is in the business of letting the same book be purchased for the price of one because the content repeats in the second book? I won't wait for your answer... As a colleague once said to me: "This is also true for filling up your gas tank at the pump." The major oil companies don't give a discount because their goods repeat themselves.

Nice quote

Titus Engel leads Freischütz production at Kampnagel in Hamburg - November/December 2004

Wie ein Torwart, der sein Tor verlässt, stampfte Engel bei den Jägerchören über den Rasen und stachelte die bierernst schmetternden Herren des Männerchores an. Seines Jacketts entledigt, mit Hosenträgern und langen Haaren, stahl er seinen Schauspielkollegen mitunter die Show.
//
Like a goalie who leaves his goal, Titus Engel strode across the lawn for the hunters' choruses, exhorting even more heroic tones from the exuberantly singing glee club members. Free of his tails, with suspenders showing and long flowing hair, at times he managed to steal the show from his dramatic counterparts.

http://www.bode-engel.com/presse/medienberichte-zu-der-freischuetz/flensburger-tageblatt-22112004/