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Author Archives: MMarks
Some links
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1. In Court in the act: How many European Courts are there? the IPKAT discusses the confusion:
Confusingly similar — but these folk shouldn’t be confused. The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has emailed the information that a new intellectual property case has been referred to the Court of Justice, but it has got itself into something of a mess as to which Court of Justice it means. After the EU’s judicial institutions were renamed, this weblog, in common with many other people and publications, has practised calling the EU’s Court of Justice the Court of Justice of the European Union, abbreviating it as the CJEU. The UKIPO however prefers to refer to this Court as the European Court of Justice and to abbreviate it as the ECJ.
2. Prof. Dr. Thomas M.J. Möllers of Augsburg University has set up a database of some areas of German and EU commercial law: Datenbank zum deutschen und europäischen Wirtschaftsrecht which looks useful and will be kept updated. Link from Unternehmensrechtliche Notizen, the weblog of Prof. Dr. Ulrich Noack.
3. Angry solicitors
It’s not easy to find a good solicitor, except by recommendation. I was dissatisfied with one firm, but a recommendation to find a further recommendation via the Law Society was not useful. I mean, I knew in advance it wouldn’t be. But I established that firms pay something to be accredited by the Law Society, The Law Society: Find a solicitor you naturally have to pay a fee. So firms with enough work have little incentive to be on that lis (rather like Which’s lists recommending builders and tradesmen, which I’ve also had problems with).
Anyway, The Law Gazette reports that
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has agreed to share its data on solicitors with comparison websites set up by third parties by the end of this year.
The regulator has responded to a call from the Legal Services Consumer Panel to provide more information for online registers of practitioners.
In a letter to the panel, SRA executive director Crispin Passmore said a ‘data extract’ – likely to include the size of the firm and any disciplinary issues in the past – will be in place by Christmas.
Of course, the fact that there have been a large number of complaints against a firm does not mean that these were upheld. I recommend reading the comments under the article:
… I’ll let the moronic comsuner panels and ombudsmen, and touchy-feely “empowerment in legal choices” briage into a secret here [hush]… people pay to be included in a comparison site, it isn’t done out of the goodness of anyone’s heart.
That’s right. Amazing though it may sound, you don’t have to have to be the best to be on the “Bestsest ever solicitors .com” – you just have to set up the monthly direct debit! And who is going to pay a comparison website to publicise their complaints data?
I didn’t even know that the “Chair” of the Legal Services Consumer Panel (£15,000 per year for turning up 30 days a year) has a blog. Now I do know, I still can’t read it, because of the irresistable urge to burn my PC.
Btw, the Chair does have a blog, but she doesn’t know the difference between a blog and a post.
(Via Delia Venables)
Estate agents’ photos
Here’s a book that hasn’t yet been published, but the examples look promising:
Terrible Estate Agent Photos by Andy Donaldson.
Some nice captions too:
‘After days of waiting this agent’s patience is finally rewarded. Weak with thirst, a pair of wild mattresses appear at the watering hole.’
I wouldn’t have seen they were mattresses on a quick look.
There is also a blog called Terrible real estate agent photographs
. It is apparently the predecessor of the book.
Links, blogroll
This site is only two months old on WordPress, and I certainly intend to add more pages with links to useful material.
At the moment I’ve added a page with a partial blogroll, but it’s a work in progress and the work I put in to describe the blogs and give their language is not visible.
The link is in the right sidebar near the top.
‘Legal Language’, Economist article revisited
In November 2012 I referred to a new Economist article encouraging lawyers to translate (Economist on translation and the law). The article was recommending translation as a good career prospect for underworked lawyers. There was particular reference to TransPerfect.
At that time I don’t think there were any comments on the article, but there are twenty-one now. The article and my blog post were on November 10, and the comments – largely by translators – started on November 14. An interesting discussion.
Here’s part of a comment by NYCLanguageLawyer:
I am also a US qualified lawyer working in document review in Spanish and Portuguese. I have been steadily employeed in these temporary projects for quite some time, but inoalls is correct, these projects do not lead to permanent employment. I also agree that these law firms these law firms that hire people like us do not realize the full benefit of having someone who is not only fluent in the language, but able to act as a liasion between them and their foreign clients. I recently worked on a review in which the documents captured were clearly not what the firm had been looking for. I asked to see a list of the search terms and it was no wonder they got the result they did, they simply translated English legal terms into Portuguese, not taking into account the variations in the legal systems. I mentioned this to the supervising attornesy and gave them a list of more specialized terms to search for. This is an example of how firms are not making an investment in associates who bring languages to the table.
Books for translators
The Danish study I discussed in the last post mentioned one book written by translators: Found in Translation. How Language Shapes our Lives and Transforms the World (Kelly & Zetzsche 2012). The purpose of that book is to inform non-translators about the importance of translation and interpreting.
A book I have mentioned (with extracts) in the past is The Prosperous Translator, by Eugene Seidel and Chris Durban. That would be very useful for people starting out as translators.
Another recent book worth considering is 101 Things a Translator Needs to Know, by the WLF Think Tank. Here’s the book’s website, where you can find all about the book and the co-authors.
WLF Think Tank is an ad hoc organisation, a virtual body of experienced practising translators that has met as the WordLink Forum at frequent intervals since 1995 to discuss the state of the profession. Its members include keynote speakers at translation conferences, teachers of translation and prominent exponents of the profession on three continents.
On the book:
101 Things a Translator Needs to Know is a book for beginners.
It’s also a book for seasoned professionals, students and teachers.
For freelancers and staff translators.
For amateurs and experts, generalists and super-specialists – be they certified and sworn, recognised, authorised or simply tantalised by translation’s potential for a varied and enriching career.
It’s a compilation of insights from a broad spectrum of successful translation professionals with some 500 years of collective experience in fields ranging from highly technical to literary. No gripes, no grouses, just a selection of insights into what translation involves and practical tips about how a professional translator needs to think, work and act when dealing with clients and colleagues.
Although this isn’t a book by bloggers, it would probably be unthinkable without the internet. Surely some of the contributors have met each other at conferences over the years, but they and others are familiar to me from translators’ mailing lists, which are good sources of information about the profession (and were probably even better sources when they were a new idea).