Denise Howell reports a new blog. The author is Andis Kaulins, a German of Latvian descent (see some Latvian tartans – I thought tartans were purely Scottish). He studied law in the USA and practiced as a lawyer there for many years, and he has taught Anglo-American Law Legal Research and Legal Writing (I’m not sure where the commas should go) in the law faculty at the University of Trier. He has a website and a blog, LawPundit. (Irritating clock follows your mouse cursor).

ADDED LATER: My snotty remark about the clock in the last line was unexpectedly effective, and the clock has now been removed (perhaps you would have liked it!)

At the Zeiser & Ress law bookshop near the Nuremberg law courts today, I found a small dictionary:

bq. Rechtsbegriffe deutsch – englisch – französisch
Prof. Dr. Dieter Krimphove
Die schnelle Übersetzungshilfe: deutsch-englisch-französiches Wörterbuch mit über 1.700 Begriffen aus den wichtigsten Rechtsgebieten. Auf der CD-ROM: alle Begriffe alphabetisch sortiert nach englischen und französischen Wörtern, plus Rechtsbegriffe im lateinischen Original.
ISBN 3-448-05636-7,
Best.-Nr.00758-0001
Preis: EUR 9.90

It looked good in parts, with some definitions in the German and some remarks on usage in the English. I nearly bought one, just out of curiosity, but then I saw that page 88 and page 96 were identical, and contents of the real page 88 was missing. That was in more than one copy, so if you’re interested, watch out.

Word seems to have got out that lawyers are not prepared to pay money for a more comprehensive (and useful) law dictionary, so this follows Köbler’s Rechtsenglisch and Lister/Veth Taschenwörterbuch Recht.

I found a photograph of Professor Dieter Krimphove (who has written three other taschenguides). I’m not sure that it was taken with a digital camera. Here’s a better one.

Via Bloggerheads (posted on October 20th, no permalink, with reference to Frank Burns), yet another article entitled Lost in Translation, this time from Newsweek. This is about the FBI’s need for Arabic speakers.

bq. The FBI has no shortage of applicants who want to be translators. In the month after 9/11, some 2,000 queued up. But three of four applicants drop out when they learn the stiff requirements. Security has been a touchy issue ever since the bureau discovered in 2001 that one of its top counterintelligence officials, Robert Hanssen, had been a Russian mole for almost two decades. So the loyalty test is tough. Dozens of Arabic-speaking Sephardic Jews from Brooklyn, N.Y., failed to qualify when they declined to renounce their Israeli citizenship. Applicants must submit to polygraph tests. Background checks on translators who have lived abroad for many years are difficult and time-consuming. Easier just to nix the well-traveled, foreign-born candidate. In the end, more than 90 percent of applicants fail to make the grade.

The title Lost in Translation is in the news because of the film, of course. But there is an interesting autobiography of the same name, by Eva Hoffman, who emigrated as a child from Poland to Canada in the 1950s. I read this a few years ago. I think a weblog has reminded us of it lately, but I can’t find the reference. However, wood s lot quotes an interesting text on it, from TRANS: Internet journal for cultural sciences, in English, French and German.

I have an opportunity on Tuesday 21st to attend a day of talks and discussion in Nuremberg.

The topic is the International Criminal Court. I don’t know much about it so I did some reading online. The books I have are too old.

The ICC came into existence on July 1st, 2002, when 60 states had ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Now, 92 states have done so.
The ICC has a website (this was hard to find).

You can download the important documents there.

The court deals with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (known as the ‘core crimes’). Germany wants crimes of aggression, such as starting a war of aggression, to be included, but they aren’t yet. There is also a PDF file with the elements of the crimes.

For a person to be prosecuted at the court, the crime must have been committed after July 1st, 2002, and either the territorial state where the crime was committed or the state of the defendant’s nationality must be a party. That means that a US citizen who committed one of these crimes in Afghanistan, for instance, could be prosecuted – the USA is not a State Party, but Afghanistan is.

There is a Coalition for the International Criminal Court, according to whom one hot topic is ‘Article 98’ agreements (after Article 98 of the Rome Statute):

bq. US-proposed bilateral agreements seeking to ensure the non-surrender of US nationals and contractors to the International Criminal Court. … alternately referred to as so-called ‘Article 98’ agreements, bilateral immunity agreements, impunity agreements or bilateral non-surrender agreements.

Some German documents here.

One of the speakers on Tuesday is Dr. Christoph Safferling of Erlangen University, talking about comparative procedural aspects in the Rome Statute – Anglo-American and Continental ideas of criminal prosecution (is that ‘Continental’ correct in English? The Germans sometimes call civil law kontinentaleuropäisches Recht, but I’m not sure we do). An Internet search produced a review of his book on the subject, which was completed before November 2000, when the finalized draft of the rules of procedure of the ICC appeared.

The book draws attention to some of the main differences between the Anglo-American and Continental legal systems which, despite these differences, `coexist under the same human rights concept’ (at 366). Safferling not only highlights the differences but also states the reasons for them. For example, when discussing the pre-trial stage, where the differences become most obvious, he describes the underlying rationale behind the use of a jury and considers whether there is a human right to trial by jury. He concludes that there is no such right and that the jury is a dubious institution which is out of the question for the ICC. Other areas of difference include the principle of objectivity, the decision to prosecute, the equality of arms principle, the separation of conviction and sentencing, questioning of witnesses, and pleas of guilty.

Other speakers are or may be Prof. Dr. Klaus Kastner (he was the President of the court in Nuremberg, but is now described as a professor at Erlangen University, Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Kaul, judge, The Hague (speaking about ‘From the Treaty of Rome to the ICC’ – could this mean the Rome Statute?), Lee A. Casey, of Baker & Hostetler LLP in Washington DC, and Prof. Dr. Michael P. Scharf from Cleveland University School of Law.

The IPKAT reports a decision of the Court of First Instance of the European Communities (CFI). The Community Trademark Board of Appeal decided in September 2001 that BASS (footwear and clothing) and PASH (leather goods and clothing, belts, footwear and headgear) were confusingly similar. The matter came before the CFI in another connection, but the CFI also annulled the decision:

bq. The CFI also annulled the substance of the Board’s decision, holding that BASS and PASH were not similar enough to lead to a likelihood of confusion between the two parties’ goods. While visually the two marks had the same number of letters and same two central letters, the public were not more likely to focus on the central letters than any of the other letters and the similarity between the letters B and P was limited. Aurally, though B and P are pronounced very similarly in some regions of Germany and the only vowel contained in both signs was identical and even though “sh” sound is not used in German, a sufficient part of the German public was familiar enough with the pronunciation of English words ending in “sh” that they would not mispronounce PASH as “pass”. Conceptually, BASS called to mind the voice of a singer of musical instrument while PASH was likely to be associated with the German dice game Pasch.

Well, the Franconians tend to refer to B and P as ‘soft B’ and ‘hard B’.

(From Handakte WebLAWg):

At least six Germans have been sued recently for using domain sites like this:

www.sport-erh.de

Sport is a subject area, erh stands for Erlangen-Höchstadt – in this case an abbreviation used on car number plates, but the name of a town or Land or district would also qualify.

An article in intern.de (see also this blog: blog ) reports that the software patent EP0001163612B1 was registered in December 2001. At that time there was a plan to introduce a kind of ‘local Yahoo’, and the owners of the patent would have wanted to use these names. However, the plan came to nothing, and it appears as if they are trying to make at least some money out of the patent.

I mentioned this kind of behaviour in connection with the Impressum recently. Aas long as people are prepared to sue en masse to get fines, it is worth having an Impressum that sticks to the letter of the law. There is a website called abmahnwelle.de where victims can exchange stories to combat these actions. To look at the forum without joining, just press ‘go’ under ‘Eingang’, without entering anything in the form.

A recent comment on my IKEA entry refers to the famous story that the Chevrolet Nova sold badly in Latin America because Nova means no va (‘doesn’t go’). This is a legend, and there are a number of other translation legends. It is debunked in detail on the Snopes Urband Legends pages.

bq. … the phrase “no va” (literally “doesn’t go”) and the word “nova” are distinct entities with different pronunciations in Spanish: the former is two words and is pronounced with the accent on the second word; the latter is one word with the accent on the first syllable. Assuming that Spanish speakers would naturally see the word “nova” as equivalent to the phrase “no va” and think “Hey, this car doesn’t go!” is akin to assuming that English speakers woud spurn a dinette set sold under the name Notable because nobody wants a dinette set that doesn’t include a table.

bq. This is another one of those tales that makes its point so well — just like the apocryphal one about George Washington and the cherry tree — that nobody wants to ruin it with a bunch of facts. Nonetheless, we’re here to ruin it.

Just a minute – the story about George Washington and the cherry tree is untrue?! But I learnt that at junior school…

I realize I am risking attracting a lot more comments with other translation myths in them. Recounting translation (and machine translation) myths is a popular activity that can get rather boring.

More mysterious signs have appeared:

(No bill stickers – Those damaging this will be held liable/ Rent this advertising space)

(Five semi-detached houses being built)

Here is the Amtsgericht (local court, lower court of first instance in criminal and civil matters) in Fürth on October 4th (back to normal from October 16th).

And here is a picture of the law firm mentioned earlier. Perhaps I did them an injustice: it’s clear that the 2.5 m moving of the vehicle lets both parties’ advertising appear in the best light.

This story from Salon News was reported on the Forensic Linguistics mailing list (thanks to Gillian Grebler).

The girl is 5 and her Hispanic father has been in prison for 5 years, so she doesn’t speak Spanish. Her mother requested that speaking Spanish be a condition of visitation (or access as we at least used to call it in BE – in BE we talk about a visitationof the plague but not of a parent).
The father talks English some of the time, but also tries to teach his daughter about Spanish and some terms.

bq. The judge did not oppose such instruction, but said the rest of the communication should be in English for the sake of the girl’s education.
“The principal form of communication during the periods of visitation is going to be English,” Reagan said. “That does not mean that you can’t instruct and teach her the Hispanic language.”