Search engines: Alltheweb

This is an entry from the weekend I am posting to see, again, whether posting causes the server to throw me out again.

It gives a concrete example of a search problem that was handled better by Alltheweb than Google and Vivisimo. Hence it is a bit longwinded.

I didn’t intend to write so much about search engines. But having started, I think I should give a few concrete examples of how a search engine helps when a particular problem comes up. This time, Alltheweb did the trick: it has clustering at the end of its results, something I’ve never noticed before. It also gives examples where the word is declined: I entered ideell, it also gives ideeller, albeit not at the top of the list.

Problem sentence:

bq. Die vermögenswerten Bestandteile des Persönlichkeitsrechts bestehen nach dem Tode des Rechtsträgers jedenfalls fort, solange die ideellen Interessen noch geschützt sind.

It’s actually the use of vermögenswert as an adjective rather than a noun I am wondering how to translate. It is contrasted with ideell, but when I try to put that into words I remember that ideeller Firmenwert (goodwill) is something you can put a figure on.

There are some times in translation when only a book will do. In my case that book is often the three-volume Deutsches Rechts-Lexikon. I also think of Markesinis on the German law of torts, and Palandt’s commentary on the Civil Code – but I haven’t got the latest edition of either.Entering vermögenswert ideell into Google and Vivisimo produced some results but was not particularly helpful. But AllTheWeb produced not only the results, but a subsequent short list of clusters:

Clusters: • satzung, verein führt, vereinsregister eingetragen (7)
• österreicher, rede richtet (6)
• demokratischen republik, vertrag, bundesrepublik (4)
• allgemeine persönlichkeitsrecht, recht, schutz (3)
• hausratversicherung abgeschlossen, fünf haushalten (3)
• pfadfinderbund weltenbummler, bund, satzung (3)

The fourth cluster, allgemeine persönlichkeitsrecht, recht, schutz, gives three links. Two are to versions of the earlier Marlene Dietrich judgment (I am translating a later one). One of them is to Professor Ruessmann’s notes on allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht. Under the heading ‘Rechtsformen der Verletzung des APR’, it goes into great detail about compensation, which I won’t repeat here.

Alltheweb also found not just ideell but ideeller – it seemed adapted to German (I think with Alta Vista I used to be able to enter ideel* and get all forms – I say ‚used to’ because the results are so much better on Google that I have stopped using it).

This was definitely the best search engine in this case. I do miss the Google toolbar’s feature of repeating the search words so you need only click on them to find them in the document, rather than opening a menu in IE to search, but I may be overusing the mouse.

10 thoughts on “Search engines: Alltheweb

  1. Ich dachte, Sie fänden Vivisimo gut?
    Mit der HOTBOT-Bar bekäme ich Wetterberichte ! und müsste auf die sehr nützliche Funktion der Google-Toolbar wahrscheinlich verzichten, dass die Suchbegriff in der Kopfzeile wiederholt werden, sodass ich sehr schnell im Text suchen kann.

  2. Ist auch meine Priorität, aber nach den jüngsten Internetberichten muss man wohl ATW in die engere Wahl nehmen. Fest steht aber eins: GOOGLE ist und bleibt OUT!

  3. Due to work overload, I’m picking up late on this one, Margaret, and see the vermögenswerten trans. problem.

    May I take the proverbial bull by the horns and suggest: ‘The financial aspects of the right to privacy survive the legal proprietor’s death as long as the intellectual property interests are still protected.’

    Hoping that’s not a load of bull..

  4. I finished up with: ‘The material elements of the right of personality do at all events continue after the death of the person concerned, as long as the immaterial interests are still protected.’´

    Then the deadline intervened. I like yours, but I would have to ask myself whether the ‘intellectual property interests’ and the ‘financial aspects of the right of privacy’ are mutually exclusive. And is the text distinguishing privacy (a possible translation of the Allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht) and IP? The particular manifestation here is Bildnisschutz, the right to one’s own image, and I think that itself has a financial and a – well – non-financial aspect.

    The point of the entry was actually to post something on search engines in practice, but I don’t want to say that search engines are the solution to these problems.

  5. Material and surely non-material, rather than immaterial = irrelevant, are a good way round the problem.

    Obviously, a search engine is not ‘ideal’ for the purpose.

  6. Oh dear – is that a Germanism? Well, I’ve thought about it and have decided to leave it. It’s certainly comprehensible. The word does have the right meaning, see OED, but I think that use is not right in the law (nor is material used in this meaning, for that matter). – The search engine is really for looking for the German usage, of course, and it will do that better than most other possibilities nowadays (perhaps you just wanted to get your pun in there, though). – The more I look at that German sentence, the more I think it’s a truism – if the name is still protected, of course the daughter can get monetary compensation.

  7. Yes, immaterial is OED right and certainly better than ‘moral’ in the Romance lingos for ‘material and moral damage(s)’.

    The word also made me think you were moving ‘Germanically’ closer towards my intellectual property idea i.e. immaterielles Güterrecht. I’ve never quite understood how this differs from gewerbliches Schutzrecht, though Austrian lawyers in the field tell me the latter is more up-to-date.

  8. Well, the material/immaterial thing is a bit dubious. Nothing to stop me writing to the client, since this is not urgent (for publication!) but it is edited and I have decided to leave it.
    I thought gewerbliche Schutzrechte exclude copyright. The term industrial property rights seems to be acceptable in England, but the USA sticks to IP. I have two books here called Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht. Have been translating two things on trade marks for the past three weeks. So your immaterielles Güterrecht is presumably a coverall term. Don’t know if there is any other terminology in Austria.

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