Swiss German dictionaries/Wörterbücher für Deutsch in der Schweiz

Under the heading Zwei Langenscheidt-Wörterbücher speziell für Schweizer, Blogwiese points out, as I have noticed before, that titles can be misleading.

The two dictionaries are the Schweizer Wörterbuch Englisch and the Schweizer Wörterbuch Französisch.

Dritter Versuch, sowohl im Englischen als auch im Französischen Wörterbuch schlage ich „Bord“ nach. Klar, das „Bücherbord“, und auch „an Bord gehen“ finden sich sofort, aber die spezifisch Schweizerische Bedeutung „Bord“ = „Böschung, Abhang“? Keine Chance. Dabei ist die sogar im Duden verzeichnet.

My suspicion is that these are school dictionaries to be sold in Switzerland.

When it comes to Swiss law, I have a few references here, although they don’t always do the trick. There is Metzger’s monolingual Schweizerisches juristisches Wörterbuch, which often disappoints but sometimes gives statutory references that are useful.

Then there is Piermarco Zen-Ruffinen’s Petit Lexique Juridique, DE>FR.

Another possibility is the Doucet-Fleck DE>FR law dictionary (CD-ROM here), which doesn’t purport to be Swiss but does contain Swiss and Austrian terms.

Just occasionally, the Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen is helpful. I have a colleague in England who hates it, and it helped me most when I was translating contracts for snow cannons in Bolzano.

The old Duden general-language Was sagt man in der Schweiz has now been succeeded by Kurt Meyer’s Schweizer Wörterbuch.

One certainly cannot count on finding terms in any of these, and none of them is DE>EN.

Kluwer publishes an Introduction to Swiss Law (it may be possible to look into this on Google Books too). Also useful are purely German books: Forstmoser and Ogorek, Juristisches Arbeiten. Eine Anleitung für Studierende, and Kleiner Merkur, edited by Conrad Meyer and Rolf Moosmann. There’s also Martina Wittibschlagers Einführung in das schweizerische Recht in Beck Verlag (1st ed. out of print, 2nd ed. expected in September).

Finally, LLRX.com has materials on Swiss law and many other systems in English, not quite up to date, but not to be sneezed at either.

3 thoughts on “Swiss German dictionaries/Wörterbücher für Deutsch in der Schweiz

  1. [url]http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/justice-committee/news/interpretation-and-translation-services/[/url]

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