You may have heard of Heiner Müller, the East German dramatist.

But have you heard of Heinerle Müller? According to Handelsblatt, and Spiegel Online too, this is the law firm representing Siemens:

Derzeit überprüft eine der führenden deutschen Kanzleien, Heinerle Müller, im Auftrag von Siemens die Sachverhalte.

I’m not sure if Hengeler Müller – sorry, make that Hengeler Mueller (you see, it is difficult) – will be suing.

(via jurabilis)

This great photo of old phones translated into sheep at the Museumsstiftung Post und Telekommunikation in Frankfurt comes from Xavier Caballé’s Catalan blog. The sheep are by Jean-Luc Cornec.

The sheep can also be glimpsed in situ at the museum’s site (link above) in the upper panorama.

I found a Castilian photo too, but it isn’t quite as good.

Hat tip to Trevor.

Wildy announce a forthcoming new translation of the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch) by Professor Michael Bohlander of Durham University.

He also intends to publish a book on German criminal law this year. I think I’ll wait to see the latter first.

An up-to-date and reliable English translation of the German Criminal Code has been conspicuously missing for some time. This book presents a new English translation of the Strafgesetzbuch, (the Criminal Code), in its most recent amended form of August 2007. … The translation adheres as closely as possible to the textual structure of the original, but has been made palatable to an English ear. It is intended as a companion to the author’s Principles of German Criminal Law which is also scheduled for publication in 2008.

There is an online translation, of course, at the German Law Archive, which is not too bad. ‘Conspicuously missing’ probably refers to books.

But a translation that is palatable to my English ear certainly sounds tasty, albeit produced by German fingers.

I got this from one of Wildy’s RSS feeds.

Wayne Schiess at Legalwriting.net
thinks legal English should use more verbs.

This example shows one problem translators from German into English have:

Now spot the two nominalizations in this sentence:

The defendant made a referral to Emily Graves, a financial planner, so Ms. Graves could provide the plaintiff with advice.

The two nominalizations, along with their helpers, are made a referral and provide . . . advice. By using verbs, we lose the helpers, enliven the text, and focus on actions:

The defendant referred the plaintiff to Emily Graves, a financial planner, so Ms. Graves could advise the plaintiff.

So when you write, spot the nouns that could be verbs and, when you can, return them to their livelier form.

Referral becomes referred the plaintiff. English needs the direct object, plaintiff.
But sometimes it isn’t clear to the translator from the German text what the direct object should be. And even if it is clear, it may take a while for the translator to work it out.

In fact, we sometimes have to replace refer X by make a referral just in order to avoid interpreting.

So the list of similar phrases given by Schiess to avoid might be useful to a translator not to avoid.

Does legal German use even more nouns than legal English? I sometimes think so. At all events, I usually vary some o the nouns with verbs. But sometimes I use the noun because it just sounds so – lawyerlike, to quote the New Yorker cartoon.

Christiane Link is a German wheelchair user who lives in the UK and reports on life for the disabled in Behindertenparkplatz.

This week, personnel at Frankfurt Airport tried to stop her returning to the UK because she had no visa and ‘the UK is not part of the EU’.

Ich habe mehr und mehr den Eindruck, dass die eigentliche Gefahr für den Flugverkehr nicht von den Passagieren, sondern vom Sicherheitspersonal an den Flughäfen ausgeht. Gestern hätte man mir am Flughafen Frankfurt fast den Heimflug verweigert. Begründung: Großbritannien sei nicht in der EU und ich bräuchte ein Visum zur Einreise. PISA lässt grüßen!

The Legal Antiquarian is a promising new blog from Mike Hoeflich of the University of Kansas School of Law.

In a recent entry, it mentions Goethe’s juristische Abhandlung über die Flöhe.

It looks as if the original was by Otto Philipp Zaunschliffer, whether in Latin or German. In the Rococo period, there was a plague of fleas, and Zaunschliffer wrote this spoof treatise on fleas in that time. It became very popular with law students. Later it was wrongly attributed to Goethe. the Wikipedia entry on Flohbein mentions this – a Flohbein (flea leg) being a ceramic woman’s leg with fleas or fleabites on the upper thigh, used to fill a pipe with tobacco. Here’s a picture from Gleiberg, via Wikipedia: