Failed video of Fürth Christmas market / Fürther Weihnachtsmarkt-Video aufgegeben

I’ve abandoned attempts to upload a video. I’ve discovered I can edit Quicktime movies easily in Quicktime Pro, but I have a feeling it’s an effect of Movable Type and/or my provider’s settings that I can’t show a clip. I will wait till I have moved the weblog elsewhere, which will not be immediately.

Here are two pictures, anyway. You need to imagine the children bleating, which they began to do as soon as they saw the sheep.

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Low German Wikipedia / Wikipedia auf Platt

Wikipedia op Platt:

bq. Moin Moin bi de plattdüütsche (nedersassisch un ostnederdüütsch) Utgaav vun Wikipedia

bq. Düsse plattdüütsche Wikipedia weer anfung’ an’n 27 April 2003. “Plattdüütsch” is tosammfatend för de nedersassische un de ossnedderdüütsche Spraak. Wikipedia is een friee Nokieksel, wo jedereen an mitwerken kann. Man to! Schriew rin, wenn du wat weest.

Under Juristeree there is one saying (sprök):

bq. Teggen ne´n Rieken prozessen un teggen den Wind pissen, dat flügg di immer anne Buxe!

(Via Christian Säfkens Weblog)

High Court – Oberster Gerichtshof?

BBC News:

bq. A High Court judge in London has reserved his ruling on a case that could lead to Bernie Ecclestone losing control of Formula One racing.

F1Total.com-News (Werbespruch: Enjoy our fast world…):

bq. Der Oberste Gerichtshof in London hat heute die Entscheidung im Rechtsstreit zwischen drei Banken und Bernie Ecclestone zunächst auf einen späteren Zeitpunkt vertagt.

Something went wrong there. The High Court, one judge sitting, is similar to the German Landgericht, the court of first instance that deals with more expensive or more serious matters at first instance.

Die Welt:

bq. Auch wenn die Verhandlungen vor dem Londoner Gerichtshof gerade noch einmal um einige Tage verschoben wurden, ist Ecclestones Lebenswerk wohl in Gefahr.

In a comment to an earlier entry, I wrote that I think Gerichtshof traditionally means any court with Kollegialgerichte (panels) as opposed to Einzelrichter (judges sitting alone), and remains for the highest courts. Another commenter felt the word was appropriate for the buildings of the High Court in London – but then, those buildings also contain the Court of appeal.

Dictionaries suggest Oberstes Zivilgericht. Does that make a person think of Landgericht as opposed to Amtsgericht? Why not just der/das High Court? or just erstinstanzliches Gericht? Note that newspapers in the USA sometimes call the Supreme Court the High Court, especially to save space in headlines, I imagine.

(Via Handakte WebLAWg)

More legal specializations in Germany/Mehr Fachanwaltschaften

A German lawyer, fully qualified and practising, may qualify as a specialist and describe himself or herself as Fachanwalt / Fachanwältin für Familienrecht, for example.
Here’s information in German at Juracafe.

This is an additional qualification. These are the types available till now:

* Fachanwalt für Arbeitsrecht: qualified employment law specialist
* Fachanwalt für Familienrecht … family law
* Fachanwalt für Insolvenzrecht … insolvency law
* Fachanwalt für Sozialrecht … social security law
* Fachanwalt für Steuerrecht … tax law
* Fachanwalt für Strafrecht … criminal law
* Fachanwalt für Verwaltungsrecht … administrative law

The following have now been added (see Handakte WebLAWg):

Fachanwalt für Medizinrecht … medical law
Fachanwalt Miet- und Wohnungseigentumsrecht … landlord and tenant law and the law of freehold apartments
Fachanwalt für Verkehrsrecht … road traffic law
Fachanwalt für Bau- und Architektenrecht … construction law and law relating to architects
Fachanwalt für Erbrecht … probate law
Fachanwalt für Transport- und Speditionsrecht … transport and haulage law

The qualification is not that easy to get. You have to go on a special course of at least 120 hours, you have to do and pass written exams. You have to prove that you did a certain number of cases in the field in question in the last three years (between 60 and 120, depending on the subject area), and to keep the qualification you have to go to at least one course of continuing education every year.

David Truex has information on finding specialist family lawyers worldwide.

To read the Riot Act/Jemandem die Leviten lesen

Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words had an entry this week on reading the Riot Act.

bq. These days, it’s just a figurative expression meaning to give an individual or a group a severe scolding or caution, or to announce that some unruly behaviour must cease. But originally it was a deadly serious injunction to a rioting crowd to disperse.

Apparently, the Riot Act had to be read out very carefully and without omitting any words, or it would not be effective. During Jacobite riots c. 1715, this Act was passed, making it a felony if a group of twelve or more persons refused to disperse more than an hour after magistrates had told them to do so. The situation perhaps had some resemblance to that in the Ukraine this week.

It’s only in the more general modern meaning that ‘jemandem die Leviten lesen’ is an equivalent. The somewhat angry site GehMirNichAufDenSack.de, in its Floskeln fürs Volk, goes into little detail.

Michael Rowley (on the ITI Gernet mailing list) says it derives from the custom of an 8th century Bishop of Metz, who laid down that his clergy, whose morals he did not consider up to scratch, should have the relevant parts f the book of Leviticus, which treat of the rules of behaviour of the priests and Levites, read to them. The German Wikipedia says that Leviticus 26 was often used for reprimands in the Middle Ages.

Techwriter’s Wiki/Wiki des Techwriters Home

Ein Wiki auf deutsch für technische Redakteure. Alexander von Obert hat auch einige Übersetzerseiten und -links.

Quite some time ago, Robin Stocks at Carob linked to Alexander von Obert’s Techwriter’s Wiki, or Wiki des Techwriters Home. This is all in German. There is a part for translators there too, with subcategories for Software, Texterstellung and Juristisches. It’s all very new as yet.

Alexander von Obert runs Übersetzerportal (frames), which has links to jobs, books for sale, dictionaries, to Techwriter’s Home (the original site from which all this developed), to Richard Schneider’s Nachrichtenportal (opens in a frame), always worth looking at, to Bruno Aeschbacher’s list of translators’ mailing lists and to Alexander’s calendar of events. The last, and perhaps other sections, should be taken over by the wiki.

On the Techwriter’s Home page, there are also a large number of links for translators.

In particular, Alexander runs mailing lists for literary translators (u-litfor) and the hoi polloi translators (u-forum). He thinks literary translators are brilliant. The trouble with a literary translators’ list is that half is interesting and half consists of requests to each other to find existing official translations into German of quotations that come up in other works.

Schott’s Original Miscellany/Schotts Sammelsurium

Schott’s Original Miscellany appeared in the UK in 2002 and became a bestseller. Ben Schott created a bizarre collection of useless facts, but the collection didn’t seem forced or twee or self-conscious. What sounds like a more self-conscious German equivalent appeared in August 2004, Ankowitschs Kleines Konversationslexikon. Meanwhile, Schott has been translated into German, and the translator adapted some of the lists to German, but if one is to believe ‘Welt am Sonntag’, not very convincingly (the number one German Christmas pop song being an unmeaningful category). It is in this German adaptation that Ankowitsch excels. Links all to amazon.de – might be worth looking at as a Christmas present – and the original might be useful for translators – it does have an index):

Schott’s Original Miscellany

Schotts Sammelsurium

Dr. Ankowitschs kleines…

I realized the translation had been adapted when I watched that strange TV programme, Elke Heidenreichs ‘Lesen!’.

I had to go to the Berlin Verlag website to find who was responsible for translating / adapting Schott into German:

bq. Aus dem Englischen unter Mitarbeit von Matthias Strobel u. a.