Notes from the (Legal) Underground has (with permission) a PDF file of an article by Bill Domnarski that appeared in the California Lawyer on seven lawyer-novelists from California.

The article contains detailed tables in sidebars with a large number of facts on and quotes from each of the novelists discussed.

Notes from the (Legal) Underground occasionally takes on the role of an agony aunt and has already given advice to a would-be legal novelist:

bq. Dear Troubled,
Your problem is an easy one to diagnose. You are clearly not fit for the law, but you are also not fit for writing. Thus your initial instinct was correct. You should write a legal thriller.

Steak ‘n Shake (a name I will not try to interpret) is suing Burger King over the use of the word steakburger, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (one’s range of reading has been somewhat extended by the Internet). Burger King claims it is a generic term (via The Trademark Blog).

bq. Ronald Butters, a Duke linguist, testified that he had found the term in numerous newspaper advertisements by companies other than Steak ‘n Shake going back decades, at least one of them even before the company’s founding in 1934.

Sprüche für Übersetzer, aufgeschrieben:
Kevin Hendzel: Es ist leichter, jemandem beizubringen, wie man ein F-15 fliegt, als ihm Arabisch zu lehren. (Oder: Ein F-15 Fliegen ist leichter als Arabisch lernen?)
Mike Ellis: Der Stift ist teuerer als das Schwert.

Written down in the past from FLEFO at CompuServe, I presume:

Kevin Hendzel: It’s easier to train somebody to fly an F-14 than to speak Arabic.
Mike Ellis: The pen is more expensive than the sword.

I write these, like many other things, in this weblog so I can find them again if I need them. The first one is intended to convey to others how difficult translation and interpreting are. The problem with it is the association of Arabic, flying and September 11th, suggesting: But if they can already speak Arabic…

The second one has a certain something but is probably untrue.

Are there others?

BBC America has a website or pages called All About Britain.
(Via Language Log and Wordlab, both of which lack a comments function, and at Language Log, don’t forget to select ‘Open in new window’).

There is a Food Slang Quiz that looks to me like a food quiz. Pease pudding and black pudding can’t be slang, nor Marmite; perhaps they mean butty and fry-up? Ah well, it’s for Americans, not British.

In Stay of Execution, Sheherezade asks practitioners:
bq. Past tense of the verb “plead”: “pled,” “plead,” or “pleaded”? Do you have a different answer if the sentence is “such a claim has not been ______ in this proceeding” rather than “Plaintiffs _______ X, Y, and Z in the complaint”?

I would have answered: pleaded in BE, pled in AmE. But some replies indicated that Garner recommends pleaded, and that Fowler was consulted (Fowler agreed with me, though).

I think there is a difference of usage between BE and AmE. I don’t think BE would talk about pleading a claim, or at least would rarely do so. A claim is argued or asserted, an argument is submitted.

We talk about pleading guilty or not guilty (a stage of proceedings never encountered in German criminal trials, although after the indictment – Anklageschrift – is read out, the defendant is asked what he or she has to say, and at this point it will become clear that the defendant admits the events or denies them.

German talks of Plädoyer for counsel’s closing speeches.

Miscellaneous remarks:
Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey reports with what seems justified scepticism the Austrian term Verwaltungsvereinfachungsmaßnahmen. The term is not particularly long to the ear of a German speaker, but the term usually used for simplifying administration (a rich field in Central Europe) is Verwaltungsvereinfachung. The former gives a number of links, all in English, riding on the story that the Austrians are using a long word for the equivalent of ‘plain English’, ha ha. The latter gives more German-language links.

However, the term for plain German is not Verwaltungsvereinfachung, but Amtsdeutsch a.D. a.D. = außer Dienst = retired, i.e. official German retired. A Guardian article of June 9th on Austrian legalese by ‘William J. Kole, Associated Press writer’ must have been the source:

bq. Ironically, though, the German term for measures designed to cut through administrative red tape is a massive mouthful: “Verwaltungsvereinfachungsmassnahmen.”

bq. Waltraud Rumpel, a city hall spokesman, offered this stilted phrase – from an official notice to an Austrian citizen applying for a license to marry a foreigner – as an example of the kind of dense mumbo-jumbo that’s got to stop:

bq. It is herewith asked to pass on the letter, which arrived here from the wedding registrar’s office, to the aforementioned competent official with the request for a translation.”

The term is said to refer to measures intended to cut through administrative red tape, not to simplify language. Perhaps this was misinterpreted by later writers? At all events, plainer Austrian is a subcategory of simpler administration.

Frau Rumpel (good name) makes it clear what problems translators sometimes have. ‘It is herewith asked to pass on the letter’ – this is impersonal and would usually be personal in English. ‘Please’ would do here, but often it’s necessary to say ‘we’ or ‘he’ or ‘she’, and then you’re stuck if you don’t know who did this impersonal thing. Original: “Es wird gebeten, das vom Heiratsamt eingelangte Schreiben mit Ersuchen um Übersetzung an besagten Sachbearbeiter weiterzuleiten” – solche und ähnliche Satzmonster sollen im Magistrat bald der Vergangenheit angehören.

There appear to be manuals on how to write plain German in Linz and Vienna. This kind of book can be extremely useful because of all its examples of non-plain-language (is there a term for that? What’s the opposite of plain English?).

The Vienna brochure is available to those who work in the city administration, in print, on CD-ROM and on their intranet. It was presented to the public on June 8th. Can we get hold of a copy, Adrian? The Linz book can be bought for 21 euros inside Austria and more outside, see link above.

I’ve already mentioned the Amtsdeutsch online on the Austrian government website. Another example in the weblog of the Austrian lawyer Michael Kadlicz.