According to a Justice Department study, about 27 percent of the 2.6 million hours of recordings made between 2002 and March of this year have not been analyzed. FBI Directore Robert Mueller told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary today that this wasn’t so. Most of the material had been audited, he said, and of the remaining backlog, over 90% was attributable to “white noise” and to audio from highly obscure languages and dialects.

We currently have translation capabilities in approximately 100 languages. The languages in the backlog are so rare that, in some cases, we have found that there is no one within the Intelligence Community with a proficiency in the language. We have addressed this issue through intense recruiting efforts, and have hired 9 additional linguists in one very rare language.

Mueller told the committee that since 9/11, the FBI has recruited and processed more than 50,000 translator applicants which has resulted in the addition of 877 new contract linguists and 112 new language analysts – their total now stands at 959 and 406 respectively. However, “strong demand for their language skills from other government agencies and the private sector” (meaning, most likely, the FBI doesn’t pay very well) leads to an annual attrition of 7% among FBI language analysts and of 11% for contract linguists.

I did not have time to watch the questions and answers on c-span but hope to catch up when they post the transcripts.

Was wollten wir nicht alles tun in seinen Ferien,… spazieren gehen ohne ende, schwimmen gehen, nach Saarbrücken fahren,… nun ist der Urlaub fast vorbei und wir waren gerade einmal spazieren,…

At least they should have made it to Saarbrücken.

(Waking Up In Wonderland)

Life in Missouri never gets dull. Governor Blunt, swept into office last Fall and having trimmed pretty much all spending for everybody who cannot fight back, seems to have turned to trimming of a different kind. Tucked within Missouri Senate Bill 280, now awaiting his signature, is a single sentence that, according to the Riverfront Times of St. Louis, “is sure to have repercussions at poolside chaises and in steamy backseats across the state:”

The written informed consent of a minor’s parent or legal guardian… must be obtained prior to providing body waxing on or near the genitalia.

The goal of the legislation is “that a child under the age of eighteen can’t go in and do a complete Brazilian wax without parental consent.” During the three years I have lived in this state I discovered a number of problems Missouri has to find solutions for. I was unaware, however, that “erotic shaving” by minors was so rampant that it required legislative action.

Eben las ich drüben im Sprachblog von Ines Balcik, daß „nähmlich“ laut Google immer noch eine häufige Schreibvariante ist – trotz des Sprüchleins, das wohl alle irgendwann einmal gelernt haben:

Wer nämlich mit h schreibt, ist dämlich.

Es ist schon erstaunlich, wie tief solche Eselsbrücken sitzen. Obwohl es jetzt schon viele Jahrzehnte her ist, erinnere ich mich noch an eine ganze Reihe. Für Französisch zum Beispiel:

Auf der Oder schwimmt kein Graf

Oder für Latein:

A, ab, e, ex und de, cum und sine, pro und prae
(erfordern den Ablativ)

Domus, manus, tribus, porticus und idus
(sind in der u-Deklination feminin)

Begierig, kundig, eingedenk, teilhaftig, mächtig, voll regieren stets den Genitiv, was man sich merken soll.

Unus, solus, totus, ullus, uter, alter, neuter, nullus, alius erfordern alle -ius in dem zweiten Falle (für nichtdeutsche Leser: das ist der Genitiv) und im Dativ enden sie alle auf ein langes i.

Ich bin sicher, daß es noch mehr gibt. Ich erinnere mich zum Beispiel an eine (weitere lateinische) Eselsbrücke, die mit „Ante, apud, ad, adversum“ beginnt und zur Melodie der deutschen Nationalhymne gesungen werden kann. Aber da verlassen sie mich. Ebensowenig erinnere ich mich an Eselsbrücken aus anderen Fachgebieten.

Note on the Flickr website:

Please note: Flickr’s servers are in the process of moving from Canada to the United States. This will not affect service, but it does mean that the photos and data that you add now will first be stored in one country and then the other. This almost certainly won’t make any difference to you but the lawyers wanted us to tell you anyway.

I was in Lawrence, Kansas, tonight for a board meeting. Looking around for a place to eat I found Pachamama’s. Unbelievable food. It alone would have been worth the 3-hour drive.

When I went to school, the start of the Tour de France was a certain sign that our six-week summer break was not far off – even if the weather gave no indication of summer. The German tv network ARD has a Tour de France glossary on-line, albeit in German.

Peloton groupé – Zusammenschluss des Hauptfeldes nach der Verfolgung von Ausreißern oder dem Aufholen verschiedener Gruppen nach Tempoverschärfungen.

Twenty-one people filed a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, demanding that Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara pay a total of 10.5 million yen (US$94,600) compensation for insulting the French language in remarks last October, national broadcaster NHK said.

In their suit, the plaintiffs accused Ishihara of saying: “French is a failed international language because it cannot be used to count numbers.”

If true, it’s a pretty stupid remark. But a lawsuit? Aren’t we just a little bit touchy?

PDFs are in the air. Sonja Tomaskovic writes about commenting PDF files in her Translator’s Blog, and Bettina Winterfeld has a post “PDF-Dateien erstellen und konvertieren” in her blog linklogbuch.

In the past couple of days there has been a lot of chatter on the ATA German Language Division listserv about the relative merits of OmniPage vs. Abby FineReader and how to get the text out of PDF files into an editable form. What is going on?

PDF files are electronic paper. Somewhere somebody has a file which can be printed either on dead-tree media or on e-paper such as PDF. So why are translators even talking about methods of converting PDF files back into editable text?

more…

Friends of friends with make-do oral skills are not a good bet for written translations. Nor is the nephew who spent a summer abroad.

Chris Durban in her Onionskin installment Opportunity Knocks. The Onionskin, a “client education column,” runs in the ITI Bulletin and the ATA Chronicle but is sadly not available on-line. What’s keeping you, Chris? E-mail me and we’ll set something up.