"Never let the cock beat loose...."

It's common enough here in Germany to complain about manuals written in Chinglish and other variations of Far Eastern pseudo-English or, often worse, attempts at German. But as they say, those who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones. The people of my host country pride themselves on the "quality" of their English, but I suspect that the actual volume of garbage that translators here produce exceeds anything coming from the Orient. Many published examples certainly cannot claim to be better.

Take the operating instructions for the RG Rapid-Launcher from Röhm, for example. This is a device for training dogs, which is based on a modified 9 mm pistol. It launches foam dummies about 60 meters into fields and water, where the dog is supposed to retrieve them. I purchased one of these recently as part of the training program for my Wire-haired Vizsla Quodians Aristos and another dog who may join him soon. The German weapons law (WaffG, English information here) is very strict, and even blank guns incapable of firing projectiles require a license (in this case a "small weapons permit" or Kleinwaffenschein) if used outside one's property or certain other premises. In the special case of certain tested dummy launchers for dog training, however, these restrictions do not apply, and this status is indicated on the device by "PTB 795" enclosed in a square (as opposed to a circle for devices subject to a permit). Note that I use the word "device", not "weapon". According to an assessment notice of the German Federal Criminal Police, these dummy launchers are not weapons.

The monkey who translated the operating instructions obviously didn't understand what s/he was dealing with. The first page describes the device as a weapon. The terminology used throughout the text is inappropriate; being lazy, I scanned the English version first, and I was baffled at the frequent mention of a "cock". I then took a look at the original German text, which refers to a "Hahn", but for firing devices like this that is a "hammer". The clip which holds eight 9 mm blank rounds often referred to as a "cartridge bushing". A felt insert for adding scent to the dummies is referred to as a "headpiece". The whole text in English reads like a bad attempt by a high school student who never learned to use a dictionary properly. What concerns me particularly is that despite its classification as a non-weapon, the device is capable of causing severe injury if not handled properly, and the lousy English translation does little to ensure safety. There is a French version of the text too, but fortunately I don't read French, so I am spared whatever horrors are to be found there.

The ITI, BDÜ and other organizations have produced a nice brochure advising companies on why quality translation matters and how to obtain it. Versions are available in several languages. Perhaps I should send a copy of the German version to the manufacturer as a probably fruitless attempt to make them aware of how they are damaging their business with such trash.

German/English hunting terminology

Since our Wire-haired Vizsla, Quodians Aristos, joined the family a bit over a year ago, I've developed a growing interest in hunting dogs and hunting. A Deutsch Drahthaar will most likely be joining Aristos in the household in the next few weeks or months, and later this year I'll start studying for my German hunting license. This isn't something I had anticipated doing before; hunting is not part of my family tradition, and I'm the sort who is more likely to try to save whales and hug trees. At the same time, I have seen the unfortunate effects of hunting bans from California to Berlin, where the efforts of well-meaning animal protection advocates lead to cougars munching small children and joggers and dangerous wild boar wandering around in city traffic.

The German approach to hunting licensure has a very healthy part of intelligent wildlife and habitat management in it. And dogs represent a vital part of the efforts to ensure a humane hunt as well as track animals injured on the roads, for example.

Because of my new interest, I've been doing a lot of reading of German texts on hunting and kynology. Despite being reasonably fluent in German, I have encountered a lot of new terms which I have to look up or ask others to explain. There are also some interesting translation projects under discussion which will require a good mastery of Waidmannssprache. So with that in mind, I've done a bit of research on possible online and offline terminology resources, which is listed below for the benefit of anyone with similar interests or needs.

Hardcopy dictionaries:

Elsevier's Dictionary of Nature and Hunting in English, French, Russian, German and Latin.

Elsevier's Dictionary of the World's Game and Wildlife in English, Latin, French, German, Dutch and Spanish With Equivalents in Afrikaans and Kiswahi.

Wörterbuch der Weidmannssprache für Jagd- und Sprachfreunde - A monolingual German book explaining hunters' terminology

Wörterbuch der Weidmannssprache - Another monolingual German book explaining hunters' terminology


Online glossaries:

Jagdwörterbuch - a nice little lookup tool that shows "normal" German, the English term and the special German hunting terminology.

Waidmanssprache - A monolingual German reference explaining hunters' language.

WebTerm hunting dog terms - A fairly sophisticated taxonomy of terms in German and English. I think it uses MultiTerm Online, and it doesn't work very well with the Firefox, though all functions seem to be OK with Internet Explorer.

Jagd und Wild Wörterbuch - Sloppy but possibly useful. There are serious problems with the English spelling and capitalization in the octolingual glossary. The sorting function is nice. This looks like another one where Internet Explorer may be necessary; I looked at it in a Firefox tab too, and the scroll bar wasn't visible and sorting didn't work.

The other resources I found were too awful to list. If anyone else knows of good terminology resources for German in this area, I'd like to hear about them.

Stammtisch report and upcoming local events

The Oberhaveler Stammtisch powwow met last night here in Hohen Neuendorf with five attendees at the Vinoteca Positano near the city rail station for the S1 and S8 lines. Most of those gathered began their studies and careers in other fields such as international relations, civil engineering, chemistry and biochemical research; the working languages represented were English, German and Russian. Quodians Aristos provided security and entertainment services. I greatly enjoyed meeting two new colleagues, one of whom I have had contact with occasionally for a few years but never met personally until last night. And I was pleased to meet another chemist/translator with solid research experience whom I can recommend for the other direction of my language pair. That's been missing for a long time.

By request of the attendees, another get-together will be planned for April, probably at the same place on Thursday April 30th around 5 pm, at which I can report on the trip to the MemoQ Fest 2009 in Budapest and current developments on the CAT scene. Watch this blog and the ProZ powwow list for schedule information and related announcements.

On May 9th, Steffen Walter will be hosting the annual Berlin powwow, an event not to be missed. Attendees will be travelling from far away (North America among other places) to attend - for good reason. This is one of the best opportunities I know of for meeting lots of colleagues in a fun, informal atmosphere.