The decline and fall of good copy editing in American journalism has been remarked upon extensively. Apparently, though, the problem is international. On the Web site of the German magazine Der Spiegel (it’s Deutschland’s equivalent of TIME) is this notice:
1:42 p.m.: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The air base in question (where I was stationed for two years) is Ramstein Air Base, not Rammstein Air Base, which gets its name from the nearby town of Ramstein, not Rammstein. As far as I can tell, there is no Rammstein in Germany.
I’m thinking this must be a glitch in the translation because misspelling Ramstein would be like TIME spelling it Anndrews Air Force Base. Or maybe Der Spiegel has outsourced their copy desk duties to India.
