According to Spiegel Online, via law blog, (not Law-Blog), the Landgericht Hamburg did not accept the complaint of a German holidaymaker in Sweden who was promised a Toilette and got a bucket he had to empty himself. It was a bucket with a toilet seat (Toilettenbrille – an interesting word for my readers abroad) and a number of plastic bags to empty it: what Spiegel Online calls ein Plumpsklo (I thought that was a hole in the ground, plumps being the sound made by something relatively heavy hitting water from a height – but maybe I am misinformed).

bq. Der Vermieter sei jedoch nicht verpflichtet gewesen, auf diesen Umstand hinzuweisen, befand das Gericht: “Mag die Toilette auch einfachster Art gewesen sein, durfte sie doch als Toilette bezeichnet werden.” Das Wort stelle nur “einen Oberbegriff” dar, unter den auch ein Plumpsklo fallen könne.

The word Toilette is merely a superordinate term, according to the court. I wonder what the terminologists would say about that?

Law-Blog discusses (in German) the pros and cons of Germans resident in Germany creating a limited company.

Law-Blog bespricht die Argument für und gegen die Gründung einer Auslands-Gesellschaft.

There was a decision of the European Court of Justice in September 2003, C 167/01, (English ) finding that companies properly founded in one member state should be recognized in full in every other state.

Before that , the German courts tended to find against those who founded companies abroad, on what seemed like moral reasons. The Austrian courts were much more up to date!

123recht.net has another article on the topic (originally via Handakte WebLAWg).

Via jurabilis: link to the weblog ‘Der Staat, das Recht und mehr’ (The state, law and more) of Dr. Johannes Rux.

He is now at the Fernuni Hagen law department, which has an LL.B. course (and which never replied to my inquiry about arrangements for doing units thereof as a guest – Gasthörerin).

I mentioned in an earlier entry the translation of the director’s words in the film ‘Lost in Translation’. Actually, it was originally posted in the New York Times:

bq. With wholehearted feeling, slowly, look at the
camera, tenderly, and as if you are meeting old friends, say the
words. As if you are Bogie in “Casablanca,” saying, “Cheers to you
guys,” Suntory time!

Chris Durban in the ITI Bulletin (not online) quotes a later letter in the New York Times from Manako Ihaya, an ATA member in California, explained that even here something went wrong.

The famous line in Casablanca, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ is translated into Japanese as something like ‘Cheers to your eyes’ (Kimi no hitomi ni kanpai). This is regarded as a brilliant translation and it is this to which the director in ‘Lost in Translation’ refers. Bob was to imitate Bogart saying ‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ not ‘Cheers to you guys’.

I think I should have guessed this.

Another thing: the meaning of the English is something like ‘I drink a toast to your looks’. So it sounds as if the Japanese really is a good translation. But the German version, equally often praised as brilliant and almost as well-known in Germany as ‘Dinner for one’ is ‘Schau mir in die Augen, Kleines’ (Look into my eyes, little one). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: condescending, self-centred, jokey, and completely lacking in romance. But famous.

A Google search will show thousands of uses of this hackneyed sentence. Here’s even a sermon (in German) based on this misconception. To which I can only say, ‘My brother is a hairy man, but I am a smooth man’.

Übersicht zum Betäubungsmittelstrafrecht im JuraWiki.

Ralf Zosel in LAWgical announces a summary (in German) of drugs offences in JuraWiki.

This is highly valuable for anyone interpreting in German courts or attending them as a visitor, as I can confirm from many years of visiting the courts with groups of students. It may look like a summary of the statute, but it is reorganized in a logical approach to the topic.

Link via Vertretbar Weblawg, a reincarnation of vertretbar.de, which has moved and is using WordPress instead of Movable Type.

Here are some links on drugs offences in the UK, for example this informative site.

The following extract by Selcuk Gultaslı from Zaman Online (almost) speaks for itself:

bq. Is This a Translation Error or is it Valid?

bq. According to the news, because the intelligence-gathering form, sent to the districts by the Istanbul Second Armored Brigade Command, demanding pro-European Union (EU) people be listed, was directly translated from English, this caused collective mistakes. For example, the intelligence-gathering form was not adapted to Turkey’s realities and thus the [white supremacist] Ku Klux Klan organization was included in the form. Due to the translation error, opinion leaders were written as high society in the form. I think this is an issue of a vital translation rather than a translation error.

The writer appears (as far as the text can be understood) to query whether the ‘mistranslation’ was in fact done deliberately in order to spoil Turkey’s chances of joining the EU.