Heutzutage kann man die neuesten Berühmtheiten auf der Richterbank in den USA auch gleich auf youtube schauen.
(Suche: Larry Seidlin)

From the Times Online: Tearful judge tipped for TV stardom after Anna Nicole show

Judge Seidlin, who paid his way through law school by driving a New York cab, is a native of the Bronx. He might have left that neighbourhood but it has certainly not left him.

Barking out pronouncements in his Florida courtroom in the thickest of New York accents, he nicknamed lawyers after their home states: “California, this doesn’t concern you!”; “Houston, I thought you were leaving!” “Texas” caused a stir on Thursday when he collapsed. The judge shouted: “He’s a diabetic. I can tell by his colour.” He offered to buy him some orange juice and fished out his credit card.

Youtube video of week
Tearful ruling

I am busy at the moment, so here is a quick plug for and reminder of the Kauderwelsch books – choose one of 110 languages for 7.90 euros, and it will tell you how to behave in the country and give you phrases in such a way that you understand the grammatical constructions. So if you know German and want a quick glimpse of one of those languages, this is a good way to get it.

Here’s the publisher, Reise-Know-How-Verlag. And here are the Sprachführer – select a language and have a look.

You’re a Tyrannosaurus Rex!
You can’t stop talking about the “good old days” of the past. While you remember everything being so much better and more glorious back then, you’ve got to realize that times have changed! It’s time to move on, time to bring in the new technology and advancements! Still, there is some charm to your olden out-dated ways. Children seem to love you, for example, as do some historians and scientists. And you should really eat something… your bones are starting to show.

Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I’m not so sure my bones are showing.

The Arcadi Espada blog reports that after the Wall fell, there were queues of East Germans at many West German libraries to return the books they’d borrowed before 1961:

Todo son historias. Berlín es las mil y una noches –noche y noche— de este lado del tiempo y del mundo. Una de alemanes, de muro y de libros que me cuenta Cristina en el camino de Treptow. El cierre total de la frontera pilló a muchos berlineses desprevenidos. Y entre los asuntos pendientes estaban los libros prestados por bibliotecas del Oeste que estaban en poder de ciudadanos del Este. Ya no podían devolverlos. Pero los guardaron con sus papelitos. Pocos días después de caído el Muro había colas en muchas bibliotecas, y las formaban alemanes pacientes y fieles a sí mismos.

This is reminiscent of what Lenin said about Germans, revolutions and train tickets.

(Via Trevor and the El Blog del Futuro del Libro)

The Financial Times Deutschland has an article about the frequent use of disclaimers, above all in email, and their ineffectiveness (as they are one-sided).

Manchmal ist es eine Einladung zum Mittagessen. Ein anderes Mal poppt die Nachricht auf, dass sich das Meeting verschiebt. Harmlose Mitteilungen per E-Mail, zunächst. Bis der Blick des Lesers auf das Ende der elektronischen Mitteilung fällt: “Diese Information ist vertraulich. Falls Sie diese E-Mail irrtümlich erhalten haben, informieren Sie bitte unverzüglich den Absender, und vernichten Sie diese E-Mail. Das Kopieren und Weiterleiten ist verboten.”

Thanks for the link to Per Döhler, who also reminded me of the site www.angstklauseln.de, which I noted from a German legal weblog recently but lost. It’s a collection of such paragraphs.

The contents of this mail are freely re-distributable under the GPL. Any files that are transmitted with it must be hitchhikers that have been picked up while the mail was speeding along the information highway. As this mail is neither digitally encrypted nor signed, it can’t be considered confidential and/or intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed to. Any attachments that may have hopped on along the way are to be regarded as useless jetsam made from recycled electrons and must be deleted straight away. The views stated in this flutter definitely do not represent the view of any company on this planet that the author knows of. We are sorry to have bothered you if you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail. You may, however, copy, forward, disclose or otherwise use this mail or any part of it in any form whatsoever, provided that you really feel like it, but you can also just hit the delete-key and get it over with. If you have received this mail in error please do not trouble yourself to inform the sender about it as that’s obviously his/her own fault.

For a different view, see www.emaildisclaimers.com.

bq. What the experts say:
‘If you are in any doubt as to whether or not you should include a notice, then you should include one’.
Email@work 2000, Jonathan Whelan

Here are some stupid disclaimers and good links, and here is the longest disclaimer.

(Originally via Carsten Hoenig and JuraWiki)

There are a number of periodicals for translators that can be found online, sometimes all issues (ADÜ-Nord Infoblatt), sometimes just older issues (Hieronymus – click on Archiv), multilingual, of the Swiss association ASTTI; ATICOM’s FORUM; TransRelations, by the BDÜ Landesverband Bremen und Niedersachsen; the Austrian association Universitas also makes the BDÜ Hessen-Info available – I didn’t find it on the BDÜ website – and a copy of the NZSTI journal Word for Word in New Zealand, with an article on interpreting in war zones – and Universitas’ own Mitteilungsblatt).

The German Language Division (GLD) of the American Translators Association (ATA) has a newsletter and I happened to look at the December 2006 issue and found an article by Inge Noeninger in Canada, originally from Frankfurt am Main, on legal translation: Juristische Übersetzungen … trocken? – Von wegen! A nice collection of references for translating and learning law.

There’s also a review of the Langenscheidt ALPMANN Fachwörterbuch Kompakt Recht (also in German).