I am excited to announce that Thomas West has been running a legal blog for a couple of months – I have only just seen it.
The blog can be accessed from his website, www.intermarkls.com.
Most of the posts so far are on Spanish to English legal translation, but there will certainly be posts on German coming, on German law and Swiss law above all.
The opening post in 2014 is headed 10 Ways to Improve Your Legal Translations – it contains a lot of useful advice:
3. Beware of British terminology in the bilingual dictionaries:
High Court (a court of first instance in England, but used by American journalists to refer to the United States Supreme Court)
locus standi (this is called “standing” in the United States)
Rules of the Supreme Court (this is the equivalent of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in the United States)
Yes, I remember being surprised to read the US press writing about ‘the high court’.
Be careful not to assume that the photograph of the former King Juan Carlos of Spain, who has been testing the adage ‘The King can do no wrong’, with Tom, who looks different and as far as I know has done less wrong.
The post Costas, costes y costos reminded me that in England we talk about court fees and lawyers’ costs. There used to be a term taxation of costs, meaning review of the necessity of costs, where a court officer, called a taxing officer (this gives the word taxing at least three meanings), reviews whether the solicitors had overcharged (the service is only available in connection with a court case, but the court’s fees, of course, cannot be challenged in the same way). The term has apparently been changed to detailed assessment since 1998. However, taxing officers and taxation orders are still so called. Here’s the Law Society on making a complaint about your solicitor’s bill.
