Legal translators nowadays often encounter cross-border leasing schemes. There is an article in German about cross-border leasing at LEGAMedia. Duefinance in Düsseldorf has English materials on cross-border leasing and other German financial matters. They also have a German site. The Guardian had an article about the problems of the procedure. German and U.S. law see the transaction differently, but the U.S. permits it. But what if the U.S. stopped permitting it? Fürth withdrew from a projected scheme last year after Bavarian legislation banned it.

For those who are irritated by the public confusion between interpreters and translators (numerous ‘translators’ who were really interpreters have been killed in Iraq), here is a picture from Lower Saxony – text in German – showing two ‘translators’ sitting in a booth. An overall term in East Germany was Sprachmittler (language mediators), and some academic tomes in West Germany use the term ‘der Translator’ for both. I’m not sure what the English term for both is.

A Google image search for translator is quite amusing. There are a few ‘translators’ in booths there, but they’re outnumbered by handheld devices. This picture of ‘our new translator’ is my favourite. But the mad translator (Kenneth Kronenberg, of the New England Translators Association) looks more like my everyday life.

The BKA is looking for translators – more details on their website (in German – from William J. Hadfield-Burhardt on CompuServe). These are fixed-term jobs, not very well-paid (BAT IVa), requiring two languages in addition to German, and translating in both directions. I think it’s relevant to mention it, though. Deadline is 29th August and they want a passport photo, but it doesn’t say copies have to be certified. They would prefer three native speakers of English and one each of French and Spanish.

ADDED LATER: William says the deadline is going to be extended – I wonder why?

Keeping on the New Zealand theme, the Independent has an article on the use of a traditional Maori style of justice to deal with juvenile offenders, successful in New Zealand and apparently to be tried in Britain.

bq. As Saga Manu, a Samoan who is one of Porirua’s youth justice co-ordinators, explains: “Where I come from, we don’t go to the police. If my son commits a crime against you, then your family seeks restitution from mine. It’s up to the families and the village elders to sort it.”

I found this via the UK Criminal Justice Weblog.

I can’t help feeling that traditional Maori, Tongan and Samoan society is different from ours. Would it help in the latest Nuremberg incident? In the empty streets in the remains of the Nazi party rally grounds, youths have been racing souped-up cars at night. Up to a thousand people have been watching, and the police have removed 30 cars and 50 driving licences. On Saturday, a 15-year-old pedestrian was run over and killed by a 27-year-old driving a Golf at 120 kph. Here’s an article (in German).

Drifting again – I assume that at least 50% of this weblog should be off topic, or no-one will be interested (here’s a very successful entry, for example): languagehat had an entry on the pronunciation of the English surname Carew, which apparently is not pronounced karoo, but like Carey.
In this connection I would like to recommend the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by J.C. Wells. Wells is a professor of phonetics at London University. He covers both British and U.S. pronunciation, and sometimes he gives the results of polls as to preferred usage.
Loitering in the comments to the languagehat entry, I found a site with some rather rude limericks and so on, requiring the correct pronunciation of some strange names. Some of these are familiar, some less so. I’d certainly seen this before:

There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Whose bride was so mellow and colmondeley
That the best man, Colquhoun,
An inane young bolqufoun,
Could only stand still and stare dolmondeley.

For anyone disbelieving, may I add that the names really are pronounced in the way that makes the limerick make sense.

From Isabella Massardo’s Taccuino di Traduzione, a link to a review of a new edition of the Reed Dictionary of New Zealand Slang. The author is apparently from the south of England, but I hadn’t encountered ‘flatting in London’ before (I must have missed it). To quote the review, by Ben Lowings:

bq. This is the first edition in five years, and as such it marks the first time phrases like ‘Too much hui and not enough dui’ and adjectives like ‘aratanic’ – a term used of accident-prone ferries – have made it into print.

Some of the terms are surely used in Australia too (pointing Percy at the porcelain), but not the Maori references.

Here’s another brief reference (for tourists) to languages in New Zealand.

There seems to be a big difference between explaining NZ slang to Americans and British people, because if you look at this site of Kiwi Words & Phrases, as it says itself, a lot of the words are British.

Here is another site, called Aussie Slang, with many dialect links, not just English. It even has Swiss German slang and the Lord’s Prayer in the Germanic languages.