German and American nudities

Finally, a blog post with the title that is likely to get some hits…

But seriously, I am writing today because a new magazine has hit the stands over here in Germany. Its title?  “The Germans” – no,  the magazine is not in English.

More surprising is the first cover (right).  And even more surprising is the description of the cover at Die Zeit:

Das Titelbild zeigt einen nackten, bärtigen Mann im seichten Wasser liegend und ein auf seiner Brust herumturnendes Kind.

Translation: the cover shows a naked, bearded man lying in shallow water with a child playing on his chest.  No mention of a clearly visible limp penis (I can't wait to see the statistics for my page impressions now).

As chance would have it, it turns out that there is lots of evidence of nudity being a non-issue over here in Europe. For instance, Apple continues to ban certain books from its store because of nudity. The Europeans don't understand why a private firm should be able to do what governments should not, and there's something else that I don't get – why can't Apple have European censorship standards in its European stores, where I can't even buy a lot of stuff from the US because of stupid licensing restrictions?

The movie Love, Actually is another great example. It is rated R in the United States, but 6-year-olds can watch it in Germany (see the list of international parental guidance categories for the movie at IMDB).  The movie is one of my favorites, and I watched it with my kids when they were 11 and 14; the movie has a couple of quite funny scenes where a couple standing in as lighting doubles get to know each other in various scenes for a porn movie (I'm going to have to monetize this site after this post).

In contrast, movies that contain a lot of violence generally have lower age restrictions in the US than they do in Germany.

Hope you enjoyed this post – given that it is hosted by Google, another US firm, it may not be up forever...

Video of Camille

I was in this storm as a one-year-old baby in a trailer home in Slidell LA.

Quotation marks versus capitalization

In German, nouns are capitalized whether they are proper or not. In order to distinguish between a proper noun and a common noun, Germans are forced to put their already capitalized noun in quotation marks.

In English, we can distinguish between an action plan and a Action Plan with simple capitalization, however. Our quotation marks serve a different purpose – signifying that we don't quite believe the word, a bit in the way we might say something like "so-called friends."

The result, when Germans write in English, is quotation marks around nouns already marked as proper by means of capital letters.

Today, I see that my translator colleague Jill Sommer has posted a nice cartoon along these lines.

Money vs. message

Yes, it's propaganda, but this speech is probably the best defense of just about everything I believe in that I have ever heard, and I couldn't have written it that well, much less delivered it that well. And the fact that it was delivered by a healthy, good looking, eloquent black woman is something that I was not sure I would ever see in my lifetime back when Jesse Jackson made a mostly symbolic attempt at the White House.

I was feeling fairly pessimistic about US politics after Citizens seemed to tip the scales once and for good in favor of big money, but the main Republican message at their convention was, of course, based on an intentional misreading of a sloppy, but nonetheless unambiguous wording by Obama.

So it looks like it's money versus message in November. I was afraid money would, as so often, win, but after Michelle's message I'm not so sure.

"Central Europe"

The Germans use the term "Mitteleuropa" (Central Europe) which has no real equivalent in English (but see this entry at Wikipedia). Now, the Economist has published an interesting video, which argues that the term Eastern Europe is also out of date.

Some of the new terms proposed must be in jest, but it is interesting that the term "Central Europe" is not among them.

Charges for stolen goods

Over here in Germany, the music industry, the movie industry, and book publishers have put a surcharge on just about everything from printers to USB sticks in order to make up for losses they say they incurred because people increasingly copy music, movies, and books. You pay several euros, for instance, for that memory card in your digital camera. (Not sure how many people use digital cameras to copy material.)

Now, a website has been put up to show you what you pay where. You can also enter the number of items you purchased over the past few years, and the site shows you how much you paid in charges for stolen goods. In my case, it is around 275 euros.

I have always found interesting the claim that copied material would've otherwise been purchased. I wonder how many people copy or download something to see whether they like it and then decide they don't.

Before and after photos of Germany

I just came across this collection of photos of Eastern Germany taken around the time the Wall fell and then years later, after the buildings had been renovated. The contrast is stark, and I can tell you from personal visits that they are not exaggerated exceptions – this is what has happened to eastern Germany over the past 20 years.