Peter Harvey, linguist

Tens and dozens

El País has the headline:

El paso de la borrasca por Francia deja decenas de muertos

A proper translation would be:

Tens of people die as the storm passes through France.

But, accurate and valid though that might be, surely it would be more natural in English to talk of ‘dozens’ of people rather than ‘tens’. The article says that at least forty people have died, so the difference between the two words is negligible. There is a difficulty, though. A stroppy and stupid client, of whom the translation business has no shortage, might complain not only that it was inaccurate but that the translator had misread the ‘decenas’ as ‘docenas’. Similarly, an examiner might mark ‘dozens’ as a mistake.

Seeing ‘borrasco’ reminds me that Wuthering Heights is called Cumbres borrascosas in Spanish. ‘Borrascoso’ is a normal Spanish word for stormy, so at a time when the book was set in university exams I received several compositions using ‘wuthering’ to describe the weather: It was a wuthering day or The weather became wuthering.

Spanish hypercorrection of a loanword

The Spanish tendency to add an intrusive e to English words that begin with s[consonant] is well known, as is its consequential effect on the article which leads to people saying an estation, an estatistic etc. Nevertheless, I was surprised the other day to see stablishment in El País. Surely this was a blunder with one of the few English words that really do start with es[consonant].

It turns out not to be so straightforward. According to WordReference the 2005 Espasa-Calpe accepts stablishment, though the DRAE does not, as an alternative to establishment in the limited English sense of the people who run the country:

stablishment o establishment

1. (voz i.) m. Conjunto de dirigentes o personas que tienen el poder:
   el stablishment de la nación.

A search in El País comes up with four references, the oldest being from March 2009. Does this mean that the word is increasing in use? Anyway it is an unusual phenomenon. We are used to seeing English words Hispanicised, for example esmoquin and esnifar add the intrusive e. But stablishment seems to be a case of hypercorrection that removes an e that really should be there. And, no doubt, it is pronounced el estáblimen!

A final point. The OED accepts stablishment as a variant of establishment in some senses but not the one used in Spanish. Its most recent quotation is from 1898.

ISBNs and culture

The main register for book data in the UK is Nielsen’s. They also run the UK’s ISBN Agency, the body that allocates ISBNs for books. I am going through the process of registering my books there to make it easier to sell them in the UK. I read in their Introductory Guide for new publishers:

If you are based outside the UK and Ireland and have already purchased your ISBNs from the appropriate agency …

But I haven’t purchased my ISBNs. I obtained them free of charge from the Spanish ISBN Agency, which is a part of the Ministry of Culture.

Another BBC crash blossom

Social care talks back death tax

A Willy Wizard idea

Just imagine that your book is languishing on Amazon at

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,864,776 in Books

perhaps because you can’t be bothered to upload a cover image

and that

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth buying, borrow if you can, June 16, 2009

What do you do to get it moving? Why, you sue J K Rowling for plagiarism of course.

Legal language

BBC

There is "no doubt" the wife of a terrorist plotter wrote about her husband's desire for martyrdom in her diary, an interpreter has told a court. Adal Abdalla told Inner London Crown Court the context showed this was what Cossor Ali meant by the word "shahada"

Defence barrister Baroness Helena Kennedy QC said shahada meant a "good death" in the eyes of Allah and not necessarily fighting. She told Mr Abdalla: "You are bringing to your interpretation a hoard of other material extraneous to the actual text that you're supposed to be interpreting."

Oddly, Baroness Kennedy’s Wikipedia biography omits all reference to her expertise in the Arabic language.

Teutonic

I wonder why the BBC has chosen the word Teutonic here (click thumbnail):

From the COED:

Teutonic · adj.
1 of or relating to the Teutons. Ø informal, often derogatory displaying characteristics popularly attributed to Germans.

Is it really wise for the UK’s national broadcaster to use a word marked by the COED as ‘often derogatory’ when describing another country?

Silly clients

Last week I accepted a big agency translation, 35,000 words. It was the manual of a medical device. After I had done a lot of research, including consulting a medical specialist in the field, and had translated more than 3,000 words I was asked to put the job on hold. It turned out that the client had found an old manual and just wanted to update that. The old manual has the correct technical terminology but the context language is prolix and Spanglish. In my translation I had reduced 3,343 Spanish words to 2,875 more concise English words. But the client wanted to use the original to save money, so English-speakers buying this device will enjoy such gems as:

The LOUDSPEAKER provides the sounds indicative of alarm, QRS detected, exceptional conditions produced during the utilization and also audible messages that guide the user during his utilization (Only for device that has the Automated XXX option).

PROTECTION cover of the COMPACT FLASH memory card. Under this cover the memory card holder is located. Only device that has the Automated XXX option has the possibility of data recording in the Compact Flash.

Pull the end of the paper a few centimeters in such a way that, on closing the door of the recorder and the cover of the device, the paper projects towards the left side of the device.

VT/VF Alarm Only for device that has the Automated XXX option, it allows the device to be configured in order that it analyses the ECG signal and emits a warning in the case that it detects a possible XXX or XXX.

If modification of any of the operating parameters of the device is performed, it will be asked if it is required put these changes into effect, before exiting from the Configuration menu:

Badgergasm

As Mark Liberman points out, badgergasm does have some genuine (if puzzling) web hits.

10 Big Myths about copyright explained

A useful site explaining how copyright works and how it doesn’t here.