Categories: politics, konigswinter, professional-development, germany
Tags: Politics, Königswinter, Professional development
Date: 24 November 2008 21:29:02
and apologies for keeping you in it - suspense, that is. I seem to have been rather busy of late.
My mystery dinner companion was Norbert Lammert.
I know his name is not particularly well known in the Anglo-Saxon world but allow me to prevent your having to google him. (As I mentioned in my own comment on my previous post, to her shame, a German colleague of mine had to google his name!). Norbert Lammert is the President of the Bundestag which more or less the British equivalent of the Speaker of the House of Commons. In terms of seniority, he is second only to the President of Germany (currently Horst Köhler - not Angela Merkel who is the Chancellor - the sort of equivalent to our Prime Minister - who is not the equivalent to our Chancellor who would be Peer Steinbrück, the Minister for Finance... are you following this?*)
There is of course a bit of a story as to how I, a humble translator, came to be dining with one of Germany's senior politicians. I'll try to be brief - in fact, I think I'll turn this into two posts so that my gentle readers are not lulled to sleep.
Quite a few years ago, for some inexplicable reason, I was invited to take part at the Young Königswinter Conference. The Königswinter Conference which is held in Germany for senior politicians. The junior version is held for high-flying young (under 30s) British professionals to cut their teeth, flex their muscles and generally test their mettle with their German counterparts in debating issues of the day. Our conference, which was held in Berlin was entitled "A New World Order?"
It is not false modesty when I say that I was amazed to be invited. My British colleagues on that occasion included a young man who was an Oxford don in Law and another who was policy adviser to Gordon Brown before Labour won the General Election in 1997 (I did say it was some time ago!). At the time, I had an interesting but fairly junior job at the British Council.
In the intervening years I have not been able to take part in any of the alumni events for one reason or another but this one was taking place at Oxford University and I thought it would be relatively easy to attend from the Ancient Roman City.
I signed up for the lecture and the subsequent meal, hopped on a train to the city of dreaming spires and hurried down its darkened streets to Lincoln College.
* Translating documents which include politicians and their titles is quite a challenge because one does not wish to mislead the reader or be ambiguous. It is a minefield because names of ministries change, there are not always direct equivalents of titles (as in the example above) or institutions and the translator can run the risk of having more footnotes than actual text!