The Bündnis für das deutsche Recht (discussed earlier here and here) has now produced a bilingual brochure, available as a PDF on the site of the Deutscher Richterbund. (On the Deutscher Richterbund, the German American Law Journal has an entry today).

The brochure is about 30 pages in length and summarizes the reasons why businesses should base their contracts on German law rather than U.S. or UK law – there are a few explicit comparisons to the detriment of the latter from the Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009. It has a preface by the German Minister of Justice, who looks younger with every photo, and at the end the responsible organizations are named – the various German Bar, judges’ and notaries’ associations, the editorial team (five lawyers) and the translation company (Stoke-Borchert Corporate and Financial Translations in Hamburg).

I think it’s a bit of a thankless task to translate a text like this, which probably has to be done in a short period of time, where the German has a tendency to be a bit pompous and the English is not just describing a legal system but also trying to market it at the same time. The following remarks on terminology choices are not intended as a criticism of the translation – the terminology choices are quite defensible.

One thing that strikes me, having read only part of the brochure, is that it doesn’t mention the biggest barrier against German law and in favour of US and UK law: language.

A couple of terminology choices struck me. Firstly, on page 5 and elsewhere, kontinentaleuropäisches Recht is translated as Continental European law. Normally it would be civil law, which has the problem that many people don’t understand the term. I don’t think the fact that it appears under a photo of the European Community flag made this translation essential, and it is not familiar, although it presumably conveys the right idea. I think it is really a new creation (Google has 51 ghits for UK sites, 70 for DE sites, and 840-odd overall, which isn’t many). I’m not suggesting it wasn’t the best choice in the circumstances, though.

Another choice was to refer to GmbH, by way of explanation, as private limited company (quite common) and AG as public limited company (not common and not usually advised, but there is no really good solution – stock corporation is the common term, which one could find fault with).

Personen- und Kapitalgesellschaften are translated as partnerships and corporations limited by shares, rather than the usual British partnerships and companies. Presumably this is an attempt to find a term that works in the U.S. as well, although company is used frequently too.

Something went wrong at the printer’s or in processing – when doesn’t it? – when German inverted commas were used (and why write “GmbH” in inverts in the English text?). Some of the word divisions look a bit iffy, but that is par for the course, and in any case I am not sure they aren’t American. But I haven’t seen the paper version – it may be that the inverted commas were OK there (I don’t have much hope, though, from past experience).

The Deutsche Bahn has cut down a lot of trees round the pond.

Just another desperate attempt to make friends, I suppose. I wonder if the kingfisher is still there.

At last week’s ATA conference in Orlando, there was a session on blogging, as a result of which Susanne Aldridge has started a blog (In-House Translators – A Dying Breed). As an outhouse translator, I’m still interested in this.

Translation Times has a report and a photo of the bloggers present. The Masked Translator may have been there too. (I could have sworn I had that blog on my blogroll, but the fact is that I read that and Translation Times by RSS feed – a blogroll is becoming a thing of the past).

When did Deutsche Post raise the postage on letters to other countries in Europe from 55 cents to 70 cents?

I liked it being the same in Germany and the rest of Europe, at least for normal weights.

At all events, they have no 15-cent stamps to make up the sum, just the usual 5c and 10c, all boring flowers. I fear a lot of people are going to get the stamp Alte Rheinbrücke Bad Säckingen in future weeks.

There are a couple of 65c stamps that are OK (Riga and Frankfurt zoological society) if one adds the 5c crocus.
Some pictures here (if you click on the name).

I watched a programme on John Le Carré on arte on Sunday and was surprised to hear that George Smiley lived near Baywater Street and that there was a row of gregorianische Cottages there.

I can’t explain the former, but I quickly realized that gregorianisch refers to the architecture that started in the reign of King Gregory I and continued through his other namesakes to that of King Gregory IV.

The text was a reading from the translation into German of Smiley’s People (Agent in eigener Sache), so I don’t know if this was the work of the translators or the reader. However, Google finds a lot of this architecture, seemingly always in Britain or Ireland, so my guess must be right.

Here’s one example:

Auf der Fahrt zu den Sehenswürdigkeiten auf dem Lande kommen Nordwales-Besucher immer wieder durch Städtchen, die zu einer Pause einladen. In St. Asaph ist ein Blick in die Kathedrale lohnenswert, Ruthin besticht mit einem Architektur-Mix aus Mittelalter, Tudor und gregorianischer Zeit.

Here’s the story of the unfortunate demolition of one of these obscure cottages:

Ein wirklicher dummer Zufall: Nachdem er für 400.000 Pfund die Angel Cottage in Windmill Lane, im Osten Londons, ersteigert hatte, fuhr der neue Besitzer Mubarak Patel für einige Zeit ins Ausland. Während seiner Abwesenheit rissen Bauarbeiter, die er eigentlich für ein anderes Gebäude bestellt haben wollte, das 1826 erbaute Anwesen ein – das einzige gregorianische Haus in dieser Gegend. Ein Versehen, so hieß es zunächst. Später wollte Patel sich zu dem Vorfall nicht mehr äußern.

And here is a pre-demolition picture and a British report:

A LISTED building in Stratford has been illegally demolished over the weekend.

Angel Cottage was one of the last remaining buildings dating back to late Georgian times.

Newham council and English Heritage are still trying to determine how it was destroyed.

The Open University and the BBC are co-producing a four-part series on barristers. At least those in the UK will be able to see it.

It starts on Friday November 14.

There is a website for the series with extensive materials, including videoclips with transcripts. There is also a free booklet that can be ordered.

Apparently barristers are ‘the sharpest legal minds’, and at least one of my commenters will agree with this.

(Thanks to Ekkehard, once of Erlangen but now of the OU)

Michael reports (with pictures) on the translation blog talk/meetings at the ATA conference in Orlando.

Meanwhile, Céline is interviewed on My Cool Job.

It was time to take some exercise today.

Here is the zoo’s most famous animal:

But it won’t be flowering at this time of year.

A non-profit site for texts and links on German law in English has been set up with the help of the German Foreign Office:

Centre for German Legal Information

I completely missed this until alerted by a comment, but it has been widely announced on German embassies from the beginning of September onwards.

The site offers legislation, decisions and other materials, such as articles, with links to German law resources in English online.

It is possible to search for German or English titles (the German Law Archive only uses the English titles).

LATER NOTE: German statutes, for example, are translated into English by many different authorities, including international ones, and provided free of charge online. Not all the translations are good, of course, but legal translators need to be able to discriminate. One problem in finding statute translations is that the URL may change. You may often find a translation via Google if it isn’t where you expected.

This site should be a resource to find those translations. Thus, for example, if you have to translate a new statute including alterations to an old one, you may want to see what previous translators have done.

Having said that: the site does give a full text search, which I haven’t tried. It also has an FAQ and users’ guide. But I would hesitate to use a translated statute as a terminology resource.