Mein lieber Scholli (angeblich gleichzusetzen mit „mein lieber Herr Gesangsverein“), wer wie ich in der sprachlichen Diaspora lebt, kann sich hier seine Tagesdosis an Allgemeinplätzen abholen.

via http://trashlit.antville.org

Found a notification in my e-mail that a Michelle Keller had left a comment with one of my blog entries. Her comment:

I’ve been burned by so many localization companies when I bill them. Some disappear off the planet. TLx was an exception because they gave me a BONUS when they paid 1 day late!

I do not know her and it took me a while to find the comment. I first thought it was in response to one of the 2003 RWS entries (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here — wow, I didn’t realize how often I had blogged about the RWS problem!), but then I found her comment under an entry on “Scheidung per Handy.” Very strange!

A closer look revealed that Michelle had inserted a link from TLx to translation-localization.com — the same URL she had entered as hers with her comment. Is this the TLx way to recruit translators? Should I be persuaded to contact them because of a comment like this under a seemingly random entry? Why don’t they contact me directly if they would like me to send them my information? But perhaps I am getting this all wrong.

My cell phone bill arrived with all the international roaming details for Germany. Very educational. My usual work set-up is that I forward my work phone to my cell phone when I am out of the office so I can always be reached under the same number. This time I decided to give global roaming a try.

In short: It worked very well. My BlackBerry 7100 connected right away to T-Mobile in Germany — not a surprise since I have a T-Mobile contract in the U.S. It started downloading my e-mail, and since I have all my phone numbers stored in international format I could dial from my phone book without any extra keystrokes. On the train trip from Frankfurt to Saarbrücken it logged on several times to the Vodafone and e-plus networks to maintain a signal. Oddly, I was not charged for any data roaming on T-Mobile, only for data roaming on e-plus and Vodafone — but this may have been a billing glitch.

Roaming for voice calls is $0.99/minute for all calls on all networks in Germany. That’s kind of steep and the only small consolation was that the forwarding from my work phone was a local call and thus free. The other downside: In order to reach your cell phone, people in Germany have to call your U.S. number. The damage for 9 days: $67 for voice, $2 for messaging, $2.50 for data.

The conclusion: Global data retrieval (e-mail) is a bargain. Global roaming for voice is too expensive if nobody else is picking up the bill. My land-line long-distance service costs me 4 cents per minute to Germany. It would have been smarter to forward voice calls to Germany and pick them up with a cell phone running on a German SIM card, especially since incoming calls on such cell phones are free! (Details: e-plus, Vodafone, T-Mobile.) In fact, I used a second cell phone with a German SIM card to stay in touch with friends and family.

But what do you do when you travel through several countries and don’t stay in one place long enough to use a local card? There are two considerations: One is, of course, price. The advantage of local pre-paid cards disappears when roaming internationally. The other is that with each new SIM card the phone number changes and it seems to me that it would be important that one can be reached under the same number. Well, there are solutions, SIM cards which are not as cheap as local cards and probably cheaper than international roaming from your U.S. provider. These global roaming SIM cards go by names such as Hop, MonacoPlus, and United Mobile, and if you take a moment to search for sources on the Web you will probably find some good prices.

Before I go: Using your phone globally and changing SIM cards only works (1) with GSM phones; (2) if your GSM phone operates in at least one U.S. and one international frequency band (3 or 4 bands is even better); and (3) if your phone is not “locked” to the service of one particular provider or if it has been unlocked.

Bettina Winterfeld’s blog Linklogbuch has moved to http://bloghof.net/linklogbuch. (“Bloggen ohne Statistik ist doch eine etwas autistische Angelegenheit.”)

Weils so schön ist, will ich mit diesem Eintrag (und den Kommentaren — ganz wichtig!) nicht hinterm Berg halten. Einer der Kommentatoren meint: „Diskswapping? Leackage? Geeks unter sich? Gibt’s das auch in Hochdeutsch?“ Für besseren Effekt laut lesen.

Nicht, daß ich das einem Kunden als Übersetzung servieren könnte, aber faszinierend ist es schon, die moderne sprachliche Behandlung technischer Themen mitzuverfolgen. Nico Lumma schreibt da z. B. über den Fotodienst flickr: „Ein cooler Dienst, mit sauvielen Features, der ein fettes Backend erfodert.“ Knapper könnte man das kaum formulieren.

Before I started my regular visits to the Language Log I had never heard of eggcorns. But thanks to the explanation by Mark Liberman and numerous examples I soon understood what they were about. Now, finally, I can report what I believe to be my first conscious sighting of an eggcorn in the wild. In The Alpha Sigma Tau Times, the parent newsletter I just received, I am told that “the Delta Phi chapter has many talented singers (in addition to a few tone-death members).” According to Google, this writer is not the only one who uses “tone-death.” For those who would like to pursue this matter — the Eggcorn Database is a good starting point (one of my favorites: “nip in the butt”).

Amazon’s refusal to ship a German spell checking program from Germany to the U.S.A. reminds me of my first encounter of the German kind during my recent trip. After clearing customs at Frankfurt airport I went to the nearest electronics store to buy a rechargeable SIM card for my Motorola V690. I had purchased this small quad-band GSM phone in Hong Kong during my trip last October. With local rechargeable SIM cards my cell phone calls are a lot cheaper than international roaming with my U.S. plan. Here at home you can buy those rechargeable SIMs in the local supermarket and they ring them up with your groceries. In Germany, I was asked for identification and the clerk filled out a form with my name, address, passport number and ESN of the phone. If nothing else, this would have told me that I had arrived in Germany. Whose business is it that I buy a SIM card and how I use it? What’s next? A log of all my purchases? “You bought a bottle of cheap red wine last Sunday at 14:35. Why?” I know that there is no point it getting excited; I was, after all, only visiting. But depressing it is, especially since it seems to be ok with everybody.

Ich habe versucht, mir bei amazon.de den neuen Duden Korrektor 3.0 zu bestellen. Bei der Vorgängerversion gefällt mir trotz aller Mätzchen beim Installieren und der unheimlichen Trägheit bei der Prüfung besonders, daß Alternativen mit Erklärung angeboten werden. Es war nicht meine erste Bestellung bei amazon.de. Doch wie aus heiterem Himmel wurde mir da auf einmal mitgeteilt, daß eine Auslieferung von Software in die USA untersagt sei. Ach du lieber Himmel! Welche militärischen Geheimnisse sich wohl in der neuen deutschen Rechtschreibung verstecken?

One of the pleasures of visiting my former home town from time to time is, no doubt, eating and drinking what I cannot get here in the Mid-West. Over the years, “Die Kartoffel” at the east end of the pedestrian mall in Saarbrücken’s downtown area has been a great place for all sorts of potato-based dishes. On Thursday, the day before my departure, I had the “Lyoner und Bratkartoffeln” — what a treat!