Just a note that both Language Log and languagehat have entries about poor court interpreting and its effects for the defendant. Bill Poser in Language Log talks about people who can speak two languages but don’t know anything about interpreting, and the fact that they may abridge.

bq. Interpreters may be highly qualified, or they may be the bailiff’s sister who took a little Spanish in high school. No one really knows how often this leads to miscarriages of justice, in part because it is very difficult to appeal on these grounds because appellate courts normally consider only the written record of the trial, and the written record contains only the English translation of the testimony, not what was actually said.

Poser compares Canada and the US, but I fear there is nowhere in the world you could be guaranteed a good interpreter. In Germany, there are sworn interpreters, but not for all languages, and the judges don’t always call sworn interpreters (and, dare I whisper it, not even all sworn interpreters are perfect). The thing that worries me most is the inability of some judges and presumably of most people to understand what interpreting involves.

Steve at languagehat picks up the point about the difficulty of appeal:

bq. This strikes me as a serious problem, and it seems to me that trial records should include a taped record of foreign-language testimony so that if there is a complaint about the translation it can be checked. Otherwise, what’s to prevent an ignorant or malicious interpreter from completely distorting, or even inventing, testimony?

He asks what the situation is in other countries. Bill Poser says in all common-law countries appeals can be based only on the written record. I feel I should know the answer to this. I think the written record is only a big deal in the USA. However, I don’t know how far one can appeal against misinterpretation. Btw, don’t miss the comments at languagehat.

Some good descriptions of the interpreter’s position at the court interpreter weblog. A German interpreter, but with a broader weblog range, here at Plain English.

Michael Kadlicz links to a wonderful video advising Germans to learn English, a Berlitz ad.

It’s rather reminiscent of Tony Hancock’s Radio Ham (possibly downloadable here), but more concise.

Do I need an MP3 player?

bq. The Pope has joined the Queen, George Bush and millions of others by getting himself an iPod.
Pope Benedict XVI was given a white, 2GB iPod nano by a group of Vatican Radio employees on Friday at an event to celebrate the station’s 75th anniversary.
They had pre-loaded it with some of the station’s programmes in English, his native German and Italian, and some tunes. Staff are presumably hoping that the Pope will be able to use his new gadget to keep up to date with Vatican Radio’s podcast for all the latest Vatican news and gossip.

From the Guardian. Commenters are invited to suggest more music for him to have on it.

An article in Egypt Today on Denys Johnson-Davies,who is translating the Koran:

bq. Johnson-Davies returned to London, where he stayed from 1954 to 1969, but could not find a job working in Arabic. Instead, he became a barrister, practicing specialized equity law.
“It is a question of akl aish [daily bread], as they say,” confiding that he was never happy attired in his wig and gown, “It bored me to tears.” He later gave up law and set up an office specializing in Arabic translation. Clients hired him to translate in negotiations for contracts, especially in Saudi Arabia.

Here’s Creifelds for a definition (the relevant sections of the StPO are given in English in the comment on February 12):

bq. Die Strafverfolgungsbehörden (StA, Polizei, Finanzamt usw.) haben nach §§ 152 II, 160, 163 StPO, § 386 AO bei Verdacht einer Straftat von Amts wegen, also auch ohne Anzeige, einzuschreiten. Dazu ist die StA befugt, von allen Behörden Auskunft zu verlangen und Ermittlungen jeder Art vorzunehmen. Ausnahmen gelten nach dem ®Opportunitätsprinzip insbes. in ®Bagatellstrafsachen. Das L. soll die Einhaltung des Grundsatzes der Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz (Art. 3 I GG) sichern. Es ist insofern die notwendige Ergänzung zum Anklagemonopol der StA, die im Einzelfall nach Abschluss des ®Ermittlungsverfahrens darüber entscheidet, ob das Strafverfahren durchgeführt werden soll …

Suggestions:
legality principle (this is definitely used sometimes but may be confusing)
principle of mandatory prosecution (too much emphasis on prosecution)
principle of prosecution ex officio
principle of mandatory investigation (too much emphasis on investigation? The duty goes further than investigating)

principle of discretionary prosecution
principle of prosecutorial discretion (I didn’t see the point of this when I first heard it, but prosecutorial avoids that problem of emphasis on the prosecution itself)

The terms used in practice are principle of mandatory / compulsory prosecution / legality and principle of expediency / opportunity principle. Here is a book on the criminal process by Ashworth and Redmayne, ina chapter on gatekeeping and diversion:

bq. In many European systems of law there is a doctrinal contrast between the principle of compulsory prosecution (sometimes called the principle of legality) and the principle of expediency (sometimes called the opportunity principle). Many systems, such as the German and the Austrian, have placed great emphasis on the principle of compulsory prosecution. …In theory all those who commit offences are brought before the courts for an open determination of guilt and (if convicted) for sentencing, and there is no broad discretionary power to avoid prosecution – on the grounds that this might lead to local variations …

Here is a nice online comparison of the German and U.S. criminal justice systems (PDF), published by the U.S. Department of Justice:

bq. English language works discussing German prosecutors generally focus on he German concept of obligatory prosecution (“legality principle”), a principle that contrasts sharply with the American emphasis on prosecutorial discretion (described by the Germans as the “opportunity principle”).

I reopened the comments on the February 12th entry, Questions on translating criminal law. That entry just collected some questions that had come up in a criminal law translation seminar in Frankfurt. Now I have received a further comment and posted it as anonymous (it came from a criminal court in Germany). But maybe the discussion should continue here.

Here are some queries from the comment: how to translate the following. I will come back to this in the next couple of days, I hope, when not dealing with Ludwig der Bärtige.

Anklageprinzip
Offizialprinzip
Ermittlungsgrundsatz
Grundsatz der Mündlichkeit
Grundsatz der Unmittelbarkeit?

Legalitätsprinzip: I objected slightly to mandatory prosecution because it sounds as if everyone had to be prosecuted.
Suggestion in comment: mandatory investigation, because there has been some erosion of the term.

yes, I agree, mandatory investigation sounds good. It was the word mandatory we were considering in the seminar, not prosecution. The reason I didn’t like mandatory prosecution was because it sounded as if the public prosecutor simply has to prosecute everybody. What it really means, I would say, is that the prosecutor has to prosecute in certain circumstances (although, as the comment illustrates, there has been some erosion of the term. Still, if it was originally so named because prosecution was mandatory (albeit only if the investigation produced evidence), why not keep the name now, in contrast to the less mandatory Opportunitätsprinzip?