I picked this up a couple of weeks ago:
Schulte, Lee, Paul (eds.) plus Gier, Evans, Wörterbuch Immobilienwirtschaft / Real Estate Dictionary EN>DE DE >EN, 2. Ausgabe, Immobilienzeitung, ISBN 3 9805824 8 5

(There are other ISBNs too – it seems to have undergone some changes and be about to go through some more, since it appeared in March 2005. Cheap at 69 euros (there is an even smaller version too).

Now it’s on the Kater Verlag site, so I don’t have to post a page or two. I’m not sure what section it’s in, but here’s the direct link. To see the scanned pages, you have to look at Entscheidungshilfe (see icon with magnifying class beneath the description of the contents).

I’m hoping this dictionary will be helpful with vocabulary describing buildings, some of which can’t be found in architectural dictionaries. I haven’t had a chance to test it properly yet. On the plus side I think he has a number of terms that bilingual law dictionaries ought to have but don’t. Notice on that scanned page that one alternative for Wohnungseigentum is commonhold – that latest Dietl couldn’t manage that. That’s an advantage of a dictionary prepared by people directly involved in a relatively narrow field.

Like all law dictionaries, people using it need to bring some knowledge with them. Sometimes definitions are given, but often there are several target words with no explanation of how they differ.

For example:

Kataster: land register; cadastre; plat book (US)
Katasteramt: land registry; cadastral office
Katasterkarte: index map; cadastral map (or plan)

The distinction between land register and cadaster is understandable. I suspect they overlap in some jurisdictions. Collins English Dictionary says:

cadaster or cadastre: an official register showing details of ownership, boundaries, and value of real property in a district, made for taxation purposes.

In Germany the (Liegenschafts)Kataster is more like a very precise map together with a descriptive part, although it does show the situation, size and use of plots, I think. The Grundbuch uses it as a basis.

A few other things that struck me:

Einfamilienhaus (detached) single-family house
(I would have thought it was just a house)

search: Suche, Durchsuchung
search criterion Suchkriterium
searches Law Einsichtnahme in das Grundbuch

But that meaning does not only exist in the plural.

commonhold (GB) Teileigentum; seit 2003 eine neue Form von Teileigentum ( Wohneigentum) in England and Wales; ein commonhold ist Teil eines freehold land (als commonhold land bei der Land Registry eingetragen); als commonhold wird auch das Prinzip verstanden, freehold properties in Teileigentum aufzuteilen
commonhold flat: Eigentumswohnung

curtilage: eingezäuntes bebautes Grundstück
messuage: Law Anwesen; Wohnhaus inklusive Nebengebäuden und Gartenland

Curtilage and messuage were suggested to me by a colleague – they are commonly encountered in conveyances, but for example Dietl has only messuage, not curtilage (one of the things I’d check Romain for first).

In summary, I think this dictionary is well worth its price. Some of the entries may necessitate further research, but that’s the case with most dictionaries.

I have just phoned Kelly in London, since they ignore my emails and I don’t want to get a ‘personal login’. Now they may understand that I don’t sell curtains or tables. The woman promised me that my address will be removed – it was added as a freebie for me. I can’t help thinking it’s just to increase web traffic for them, but one of my visitors was referred by that site and may have been looking for ‘Curtain accessories / Tables / Tables, Coffee / Tables, Dining’. My business name was ‘Margaret Marks legal and other translations and legal translation weblog’. The woman seemed most convinced by my statement, ‘If the worst comes to the worst, I will just have to live with it and simply refuse to sell anyone any tables’. The removal of my address will ‘go live in the next ten to fourteen days’.

Kellysearch listete mich vor ein paar Jahren als Verkäuferin von Vorhangzubehör und Tischen. Zwei E-Mails haben nicht geholfen, aber vielleicht ein Telefonat heute.

Barbara Ohms dritter Band mit Spaziergängen durch Fürth ist erschienen, diesmal Auf den Spuren der Fürther Juden. ISBN 3 9810702 0 8

Germany’s new government, like the old one, emphasizes that foreigners should be integrated. This picture shows two successfully integrated foreigners from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. They both have to wear local dress and the German national beard. It looks a bit like a Manfred Deix, but it can’t be, because he’s Austrian.

Sadly, Underneath Their Robes has gone under cover (I’ve quoted it a couple of times and if I’d got round to tidying up my blogroll, it would have stayed).

The New York Times persuaded the author to out himself:

bq. Soon after The New Yorker magazine disclosed on Monday that its author was not, as the blog claimed, a female lawyer at a big firm with a taste for gossip and luxury goods, but rather a male federal prosecutor in Newark, the site disappeared behind a password-protected virtual wall.
Judges and their law clerks made up much of the site’s readership, and several said yesterday that they had found its mixture of judicial celebrity sightings and over-the-top commentary irresistible.

This has been widely commented elsewhere, as Google reveals. Good information at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground.

Now we’ll have to rely on The Anonymous Lawyer for humour with a touch of reality. Since he’s long since been outed, it must be safe.

(Via Law, My Life and More)

Multilingual Matters publish books and journals for translators and interpreters. They have addresses in Britain and the USA, or you can order from their website at a 20% discount.

I wasn’t aware of them before, but they have some authors I’ve heard of.

There is now a fourth revised edition, for instance, of Geoffrey Samuelsson-Brown’s A Practical Guide for Translators, which is good (have only seen earlier editions).

I would be tempted by Josef F. Buenker’s The Interpreter’s Guide to the Vehicular Accident Lawsuit, but since I am unlikely to have anything to do with a U.S. case of this kind, I will give it a miss. There is also a book on translation into Scots (Frae Ither Tongues, edited by Bill Findlay), a couple of Newmarks – some of these authors have been taken over from other publishers.

I got this information from a flyer in the ITI Bulletin. The website is full of a wider range of books, and if you click on Topics in Translation or Translating Europe, you don’t see these books. To find the books of interest to translators and interpreters, you need to click on Subject – Translation or Subject – Interpretation or you will never find the book for the 20% online discount!

Don’t forget St. Jerome Publishing, though. They will have to be very good to compete with them. Any opinions on the potential of Contemporary Translation Theories, by Edwin Gentzler of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, at Multilingual Matters? This is a revised 2nd edition, so it must be known. But St. Jerome Publishing has a series of books on theory too.