David Bernstein, of The Volokh Conspiracy, reports that the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, is obliged by law to have signing for the deaf at some performances, quoting Andante(who in turn quotes the Mail on Sunday):

Now many opera-lovers, who pay up to £150 for their seats, are dismayed by the distracting gesticulations. One disgruntled visitor, author and former newspaper editor Max Hastings, accused the institution of ‘bootlicking’ after witnessing the disruption of a ‘brilliant’ performance of Madame Butterfly last month.
‘The evening was marred only by the distraction of a madwoman waving her arms at the edge of the stage,’ he wrote in The Spectator magazine. ‘To get money from New Labour, every arts institution must prove itself “accessible”.’

They do apparently have surtitles anyway (I’ve never experienced surtitles, but I found one picture of them at redludwig.com.

I will add a photograph of the system used in the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where there is a small screen in front of every seat in the house where you can choose to see titles if you want.

Language Log (caution: be sure to open links from LL in a new window) and The Curmudgeonly Clerk have taken up a topic that started in The Volokh Conspiracy: a recent case in the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that a lesbian relationship did not constitute adultery.

Eugene Volokh’s main point was that Bill Clinton would have been right in New Hampshire – a bit facetious, since what is being defined is adultery, not sexual relations.

Language Log wrote:

bq. The Curmudgeonly Clerk dissects a case in which the result hinges on a set of interlocking definitions in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, cited as such in the court’s opinion. It’s obvious that legal decisions always depend on the meaning of words, but (knowing nothing about the law) I wonder how often the outcome hinges on definitions quoted from specific dictionaries.

I thought this might be more exciting than it is. I can think of a couple of incidents relating to translation where the court relied on bilingual dictionaries, seemingly quite unaware that they are unreliable.

However, the legal definition of adultery is something the courts do often have to consider. I am surprised there is no established definition here.

In England and Wales, there is one ground for divorce (irretrievable breakdown), but five facts by which it can be proved. One of these five facts is unreasonable behaviour: this is shorthand for behaviour by the respondent that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to put up with. Another is adultery. Homosexual relationships are not adultery, but they can be unreasonable behaviour (not actually unreasonable, but such that the other spouse has grounds for divorce).

So the question is: what other ways are there of getting divorced in NH? I got a list in a popup window here.

bq. New Hampshire Divorce Law Summary

The Times Online law section (registration should be free of charge) reported on October 28th that New Zealand will no longer be using the Privy Council as its final court of appeal.

bq. The decision, which follows similar steps over the past 50 years by Australia, Canada and South Africa, ends 163 years of legal dependence on New Zealand’s former colonial masters. A supreme court of five judges will become the final court of appeal from July 1 next year.

The full name of the court is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Rechtsausschuss des Kronrats). Its members are the judges of the House of Lords plus one or two Commonwealth judges. Only 15 countries will still be sending appeals to it, most of them Caribbean countries with death-penalty cases (curious that the House of Lords have to deal with death-penalty cases when the death penalty has been abolished in Britain, and with questions relating to a written constitution when, despite the Human Rights Act, Britain doesn’t have anything quite like that).

The article goes into some detail about death penalty cases in the Caribbean.

Those with spelling problems should note: a member of the Privy Council is a Privy Counsellor (not Councillor).

If this is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, what is the Privy Council? In the Middle Ages it was a group of people who advised the King. Now, it is more amorphous. People are made members of the Privy Council for life, and they are addressed as ‘Right Honourable’. But only if they are ministers in the government do they actually decide anything. There are about 500 members. They only ever meet in full when the monard dies or announces an intention to marry. The Privy Council passes some delegated legislation, called Orders in Council (Dietl says (Regierungs-)Verordnung).

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian archives by Roy Hattersley, who became a member. (He gives a list of some of the well-known members – a full list is here).

bq. Harold Wilson once assured Richard Nixon that, because he was addressing ministers who had taken the privy council oath, he could speak freely about nuclear strategy. No doubt the secrets of the Pentagon remained secure. But I doubt if it was the promise “not (to) know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s person, honour, crown, or dignity royal” which prevented the president’s audience from running out of Downing Street to phone the Soviet embassy.

bq. Quoting those words from the privy council’s oath is certainly an offence and possibly treason. Members are required to “keep secret all matters committed and revealed unto you or that shall be treated secretly in council”. So I should not describe the Gilbertian meeting at which I promised to “defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences and authorities granted to Her Majesty”.

LAWgical reported yesterday on an article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung saying that the Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht may be abolished as part of the money-saving package announced yesterday by Edmund Stoiber.

Stoiber wants to remove one whole tier of police and schools administration too.

The Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht is a unique institution. The Einführungsgesetz zum Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (Introductory Act to the Act on the Constitution of the Courts (or to the Judicature Act)) provides that in Länder with more than one Oberlandesgericht, the hearing of and decision in appeals on a point of law that would normally go to the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) can be dealt with by an oberstes Landesgericht (highest regional court?).

The website has a lot of very nice photos, of president, public prosecutors, and visitors from China and Ukraine.

Translators have long wondered how to translate the BayObLG – Higher Bavarian Court? Highest Bavarian Court of Appeal? They may still wonder, because even if the court is abolished, its name will haunt translations for years to come.

Axel H. Horns has a weblog, in English, on patent law. He’s a patent agent / patent attorney / Patentanwalt in Munich. Via Bag & Baggage.
Incidentally, instead of writing Impressum, he uses ‘Disclaimer / About this website (Pflichtangaben gemäss TDG)’.

Bettina, of Nicht-alle-Tage-Buch, writes that a Wiki, the Translator Help Wiki, has been started by the TW_Users mailing list. TW deals with Trados Workbench and other translation memory software (but not with Transit). However, the Wiki seems wider than that, although not much has appeared there yet.

For many readers in Germany, who may be wondering what a Wiki is: it’s a collection of knowledge made by a group of people. There are many Wikis on the Internet. One person starts with an outline page, and words are marked to show that the next person who comes along can add to them by starting a new page. I’ve occasionally thought of starting a Wiki here, but I don’t know how many people would join in.

I’ve mentioned JuraWiki before now. That is a German law wiki. There is an English-language wiki called Wikipedia (link not working at the moment) with a German section.

There happens to be a link to ‘What is a wiki?’ in Handakte WebLAWg today.