Axel H. Horns has a weblog, in English, on patent law. He’s a patent agent / patent attorney / Patentanwalt in Munich. Via Bag & Baggage.
Incidentally, instead of writing Impressum, he uses ‘Disclaimer / About this website (Pflichtangaben gemäss TDG)’.

Bettina, of Nicht-alle-Tage-Buch, writes that a Wiki, the Translator Help Wiki, has been started by the TW_Users mailing list. TW deals with Trados Workbench and other translation memory software (but not with Transit). However, the Wiki seems wider than that, although not much has appeared there yet.

For many readers in Germany, who may be wondering what a Wiki is: it’s a collection of knowledge made by a group of people. There are many Wikis on the Internet. One person starts with an outline page, and words are marked to show that the next person who comes along can add to them by starting a new page. I’ve occasionally thought of starting a Wiki here, but I don’t know how many people would join in.

I’ve mentioned JuraWiki before now. That is a German law wiki. There is an English-language wiki called Wikipedia (link not working at the moment) with a German section.

There happens to be a link to ‘What is a wiki?’ in Handakte WebLAWg today.

Robin Stocks has altered the title of Carob to Carob (not a blog).

The question ‘Why not a blog?’ is answered ‘Blogs aren’t written in WinWord’.
If Rebecca Blood and others can handcode their sites, I fail to see why a Word for Windows file can’t be a blog.
Robin has said many things in the past that have made more sense than this!

He has started archiving entries under categories: ‘No Permalinks’.

This does mean that the much older Bonner Übersetzer- und Dolmetscherforum (Bonn translators’ and interpreters’ forum) is a blog, because it’s based on Blogger.

Carob lists a new translation blog, Translation ‘n Stuff (Werner), subtitled ‘Observations on trends in the translation market’. Now who could this possibly be? – is there more than one German translator in Canada with two native languages?

I mentioned Corp Law Blog recently on a language issue, among and between. Having described this as ‘the most trivial issue ever discussed on Corp Law Blog’, Mike had to publish a retraction the next day:

bq. Yesterday I discussed what I thought was “The Most Trivial Issue Ever Discussed on Corp Law Blog” — the use of “among” and “between” when referring to contracting parties. Judging by the volume of email I’ve received on this post, either the issue isn’t that trivial or Corp Law Blog readers love trivia. As one reader correctly predicted:

bq. I suspect you might get more mail on this “trivial” subject than on other, more weighty issues; we lawyers like nothing more than discussing language and usage.

Readers quoted Fowler, Garner and the OED.

Today, Corp Law Blog links to two sites of ‘alleged perps’.

Martha Stewart, a household name in the USA in more way than one, was charged with some white-collar crimes, and she apparently set up a website to put herself in a better light. Now one Richard Scrushy, who is in a similar position, has done the same thing.

Corp Law Blog compares:

bq. Whose is better? Scrushy’s site looks like a standard web template with a little tinkering; Martha’s, of course, is a masterpiece of tasteful design. Both sites purport to set the record straight, but Scrushy’s site strains credulity by misleadingly calling itself “News Service.” Martha’s, on the other hand, leaves us with the impression that it’s just her (and her gazillions of fans) talking.

A new issue of the German Law Journal is online.

They are publishing to a larger audience free of charge and would like to continue to do so. They would be interested in advice on potential funders.

I will paste the table of contents:

German Law Journal
Vol. 4 No. 11 (1 November 2003)

Table of Contents

Public Law
Religious Tolerance, Pluralist Society and the Neutrality of the State: The
Federal Constitutional Court’s Decision in the Headscarf Case, by Matthias
Mahlmann

Procedural Fairness in a Militant Democracy: The “Uprising of the De-cent”
Fails Before the Federal Constitutional Court, by Thilo Rensmann

Private Law
An Economic Analysis of Consumer Protection in Contract Law, by Stefan Haupt

European & International Law
The extradition of nationals: Comments on the extradition request for
Fujimori, by Arnd Düker

Review Essay ­ Bruno de Witte’s Ten Reflections on a Constitutional Treaty
for Europe, by Alicja Magdalena Herbowska and Carlos Hernández Ferreiro

Legal Culture
Article ­ California’s Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act and American
Preemption Doctrine, by Libby Adler

Book Review – Reflections on the Influences of German Administrative Law on
the Concept of Reasonableness in South African Law – a review of
Un-reasonableness as a Ground of Judicial Review in South Africa ­
Consti-tutional Challenges for South Africa’s Administrative Law, by Geo
Quinot

Book Review – Christina Möller, Völkerstrafrecht und Internationaler
Strafgerichtshof ­ kriminologische, straftheoretische und rechtspoliti-sche
Aspekte, by Christian Maierhöfer

Book Review ­ Stefan Griller (ed.), International Economic Governance and
Non-Economic Concerns: New Challenges for the International Legal Order, by
Tristan Baumé

Here is a problem an EN>DE translator enquired about:

bq. If the decree nisi was pronounced by a *district judge* and the respondent wishes to appeal, he or she must serve notice of appeal and set down the appeal at this court (this court ist ein County Court) within 14 days of the date of the decree nisi.
If the decree nisi was pronounced by a *judge* and the respondent wishes to appeal …………within 4 weeks…….

This is from an English decree nisi. The document is not headed ‘decree nisi’, but why make things easy? It is a confirmation that the parties can have a divorce – get a decree absolute – six weeks later, unless some objection exists (arrangements for the children not made is the most common).

Until a few years ago, the county court had a judge and a registrar. The registrar – one of the many registrars that exist in English law – was called a ‘judicial officer’, a person who was not a judge but had some judicial functions. He or she dealt with interlocutory proceedings and even decided simpler matters. Was sometimes translated into German as Rechtspfleger.

But then registrars were renamed district judges, and given more demanding work too, I think.

Now we have a document saysing ‘If the decree nisi was pronounced by a district judge’ or ‘If the decree nisi was pronounced by a judge’. This is mind-boggling. It seems to imply that the district judge is not a judge – but why call him one, then? It looks as if there has simply been a failure to adapt the form.

It would be OK if instead of judge they wrote ‘circuit judge’, but presumably it isn’t necessarily. It could certainly be a Recorder.

I was asked if it means Amtsrichter. Well, in England, judges aren’t usually assigned to just one court. OK, in the House of Lords and the Court of Appeal they are, but we have High Court judges who may just as well be sitting in the Crown Court.

Perhaps one might write ‘durch einen Rechtspfleger (district judge) … durch einen Richter…’ To put ‘(judge)’ as the English name would also be odd, as it’s a generic.

Of course, we don’t have a district court. Many people assume that if there is a district judge, there must be a district court. And also, there is a second kind of district judge: as well as lay magistrates, England has stipendiary magistrates in big towns. These are qualified lawyers who sit alone. They too have been renamed ‘district judge’.