Under the heading Exclusive: Two Linklaters partners resign after office party fight
Roll on Friday reports that two partners at Linklaters in Munich have resigned after a fight at an Oktoberfest party.
I’m not sure if this is right because I can still find Laurenz Schmitt on the Linklaters site, but not thomas Elser.
LATER NOTE: Here’s a German report from November. It looks as if just Thomas Elser left, and Linklaters weren’t saying why.
A video showing happy interpreters at the UN in New York.
Happy Interpreters
from Empanadilla de Atún 1 day ago / via Final Cut Pro Not Yet Rated
To dispel the tower of Babel and other clichés about us we thought that this holiday season we would show you what we really do and what we are really like. Don’t be afraid- no other humans or animals suffered during filming, no extra budgetary resources were required. Not even the need to talk about multilingualism, cost cutting, increased efficiency, doing more for less or any of those buzz words. We have managed to use a universal language and we hope it makes you feel HAPPY.
Apparently this is not the first cover of Pharrell Williams’ video.
Thanks to Elm.
Local newsagent’s (picture shows the rare 8-egg box):
Advice on the Tube on strong passwords:
Justicia at Homerton University Hospital:
Mile End station:
In interpreting teenage slang for the jury, what could Mark Paltenghi do? Your honour, this is bare hard to understand: Laughter in court as barrister has to translate defendants’ teenage slang into plain English
A barrister had to translate text messages sent between teenagers into plain English in court after they included slang like ‘bare’ – meaning really- and ‘bait’ – meaning blatant – for the judge.
…
During the shooting spree in Dagenham, the group are said to have sent text messages to each other, which were read out by the prosecution along with the ‘translations’.
In one message, sent by the youngest defendant who is 16, to a contact called ‘female boss’, he wrote: ‘Hurry up I’ve got bare haters around me now.’
Prosecutor Mark Paltenghi – in his fifties – informed the jury: ‘Next to it in italics you have it re-written.
‘It means: ‘Hurry up, I’ve got a lot of people who don’t particularly like me here.’
Another text read: ‘Hurry up I’ve got a strap on me, this is bare bait’.
Mr Paltenghi told the jury: ‘We believe this means: ‘Hurry up, I’ve got a gun on me, and this is really risky’.’Defendants Scott Stokes, 20, his brother Jason, 18, Anne-Marie Madden, 25, and 16-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons, burst into laughter.
Jurors also giggled when Judge Patricia Lees asked the defence barristers: ‘Do you agree with these translations?’
(First seen in Metro headed I’m a barrister, innit)
LATER NOTE: Just in, the report of a witness speaking Sierra Leone creole (Krio) for an hour before anyone in court realized it was not an acoustics problem.
Witness gave evidence for an hour before anyone in court realised she wasn’t speaking proper English
At Language Log, Mark Liberman has a post dated 28.11 and headed Plebgate judgment, in which he reports on his experience as an expert witness, with Peter French appearing for the other side (Mitchell’s).
As is widely known, Andrew Mitchell, the government chief whip, was stopped by police from cycling through a pedestrian entrance in Downing Street and is said to have told the policeman ‘Best you learn your fucking place – you don’t run this fucking government – you’re fucking plebs.’
The language aspect was that there were arguments that the police officer in questio, Toby Rowland, was thought unlikely to invent such an expression, and Mitchell was thought likely to use it.
Mark Liberman had to report on whether the time of the exchange recorded by CCTV cameras was long enough for the words to have been spoken. Both he and Peter French came to the conclusion that the time was long enough. Liberman quotes Archie Bland in The Guardian:
You couldn’t help but be lost in admiration for [Mitting’s] forensic command of the detail: you’d need a memory palace to keep it all straight. And yet it almost all seemed irrelevant. A judgment that took over an hour to read boiled down to the fact that two phonetic experts judged that Mitchell would have had time to say the “toxic phrases”, and that he had told his deputy that he didn’t know what he had said very soon after.
More from the case – full report here – in the Language Log post. Also the commenters get very involved in forms of address in court, starting with whether it was right for Mark to address an English judge as ‘My Lord’.
Below I post parts of a press release from Karriere-Jura GmbH, which is publishing the German text and a commentary to the German Civil Code free of charge online. There is no need to register.
The whole Code is online, but only some parts have been given commentaries so far – for a list and links see in the German text below.
The publisher is encouraging lawyers to post comments to the sections, which obviously has an advertising effect. For an example, scroll down on the page to § 1371.
This should be very useful for translators. Sometimes a text deals in great detail with a section of the BGB and a commentary is the ideal source of information. But more on commentaries in a future post.
Der Online-Kommentar macht … konsequent von den Möglichkeiten des Internets Gebrauch (Details).
Hinzu tritt ein gravierender Unterschied im Konzept: Da zusätzlich zu den Fachinformationen für Juristen auch eine eigene Rubrik für den Rechtsverkehr veröffentlicht ist, wird mit Kommentar-untypischen Nutzerzahlen von bis zu einer Million Lesern jährlich gerechnet.
Bislang ist noch nicht jede Norm kommentiert. Der Verlag freut sich daher über Anfragen von Autoren, die sich zutrauen, bis zu drei Normen in hoher Qualität zu kommentieren.
Verfügbar sind z.B. bereits Kommentierungen zu folgenden §§: 80 ff. (Stiftungen); 712 ff. (Gesellschaftsrecht); 1004; 1371 ff. (Familienrecht); 611 ff. (Arbeitsrecht), 631 ff. (Werkvertragsrecht).
Bitte beachten Sie auch das Geleitwort von Prof. Dr. iur. Dr. iur. habil. Gerrick Frhr. v. Hoyningen-Huene, das Sie hier finden: Zum Geleitwort.
Die offizielle Adresse des Kommentars lautet: