Proponents of Proposition 8 in California, ‘Eliminates the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry’, want it changed to ‘Limit on Marriage’. They think the verb ‘eliminates’ is negative and not typical of titles of legislation in California.

Superior Court Judge Timothy M. Frawley said ‘There is nothing inherently argumentative or prejudicial about transitive verbs, and the Court is not willing to fashion a rule that would require the Attorney General to engage in useless nominalization’.

Advocates of same-sex marriage were pleased with the decision.

I suppose one should keep an eye open for future transitive verbs, and make sure that there is no further nominalization.

(via Roger Shuy at Language Log)

I didn’t think I’d get a chance to photograph this, as I’m not likely to sit in a hide for a few hours.

Thank goodness they’re still selling it.

Goodbye Kompatibilitätsmodus.

The Guardian (and the Telegraph) report that Lucy Fairbrother’s mother thinks her weblog was tampered with:

The posting, A Short Stay in Tibet, begins with a description of life there and turns into a polemic against China, but appears to have been clumsily changed to read more sympathetically. It reads: “I admit that I have been under much influence of militant Free Tibet organisations back home. What China is doing now, and what China HAS done, are so different, and I am angry with myself for not realising the distinction before now.”

…Her mother, Linda, a TV journalist, said: “This certainly sounds unlike anything Lucy would have written. I saw the original and I certainly have no memory of anything like that figuring in it. It doesn’t sound like her phraseology. She read classics, she writes beautifully and this doesn’t sound at all like her style, quite apart from her sentiments. I would imagine it’s been done today. Students for a Free Tibet have in the past had tampering with their own internal emails.”

How beautifully Lucy writes is for readers to decide, but if the Chinese have altered the weblog, they also managed to alter the Wayback Machine – see here. Very clever, those Chinese.

LATER NOTE: My suspicions are shared by this letter to the Guardian today (thanks to Peter).

Via LAWgical:

Bernd Schmitz (multimedia blog) found the general terms of business of 1 & 1 as a potential ISP heavy going and had the idea of creating a word cloud from them at Wordle.

I tried the same thing with Virgin broadband terms and conditions (UK):

I suppose a contrast between two English or two German sets might be more interesting.

Superficially, I note that the English contract is addressed to you, not that the word springs to the eye in the cloud, whereas the German is in the third person, hence der Kunde (the customer). Also, the German has portmanteau words like Mindestvertragslaufzeit (minimum contract term) (and more abbreviations than the English, such as z.B. and ggf, the former with a full stop in the middle and the latter without). The German berechtigt and verpflichtet match the English may and must (no shall here). Might be worth thinking about when translating from one to the other, although one doesn’t always want to do a complete adaptation.

I see from the Aticom (translators’ association) website a seminar on legal English in October and November – I know nothing about it or the speaker, but I imagine some readers might be interested, and I see it’s limited to twenty participants:

Typische Rechtsbegriffe aus dem Zivilrecht mit Schwerpunkt auf Vertragssprache, Gerichtsverfahren und Familienrecht mit englischen und deutschen Beispielstexten

Veranstalter:
ATICOM Fachverband der Berufsübersetzer und Berufsdolmetscher e.V:

Referentin:
Claudia Butterly
Frau Butterly ist Volljuristin und staatlich anerkannte Übersetzerin für Englisch (gerichtlich ermächtigt durch das OLG Köln) und hat ein Fernstudium am britischem College “Law for Business” absolviert. Sie arbeitet als freiberufliche Übersetzerin und Dolmetscherin und ist seit sieben Jahren als Englischtrainerin in der Erwachsenenbildung tätig. Erfahrungen in juristischen Übersetzungen konnte sie insbesondere während ihrer Arbeit für Anwälte und Patentanwälte sammeln. Frau Butterly lebt in deutsch/schottischem Umfeld.

I didn’t read the last sentence till after I saw the following:

Wie übersetze ich “anhängig”, “Anfechtung”, “enter appearance” oder “condescendence”?

Condescendence is clearly Scottish! I suppose a deutsch-schottisches Umfeld is what they call it if you’re surrounded by Germans and Scots.