A slightly anonymized version of the document (Beschluss) I had to translate for the local court this week:

X ./. Y wegen FREITEXT

Something similar with KOPIERVORLAGE at Telekommunikation und Recht.

Mark Liberman at Language Log writes on the topic of popularly deprecated language usage:

Finally, I recognize the necessity to take account even of the kind of grammatical and lexicographical advice that’s entirely incompetent and mistaken: which-hunting, prepositional paranoia, they phobia, and so on. I know someone who believes deeply that wearing white pants after Labor Day is an offense against decency, and who feels entitled to explain this to me at length whenever the topic comes up. I doubt the validity of this fashion advice, and don’t care much one way or the other in any case; but I generally (well, sometimes) go along with this prejudice in order to avoid pointless arguments. Similarly, I sometimes regulate my use of which so as to avoid arguments with copy editors. It’s cowardly, I know, but there you are.

That’s something I do in translation. For instance, I sometimes restrict which to defining relative clauses and use that in non-defining ones if I think an American is going to read the translation, even though not all Americans believe that that is a rule.

I don’t usually use they as a non-gender-specific singular, although I think it can be elegant (albeit easier to use in an original text than in a translation).

Example from above link:

Subject to this Act, every person who is qualified as an elector is entitled to have their name included in the list of electors.

I think twice before I split an infinitive.

From alt.usage.english:

Certain kinds of adverbs are characteristically placed before “to”. These include negative and restrictive adverbs: “not” (“To be, or not to be”), “never”, “hardly”, “scarcely”, “merely”, “just”; and conjunctive adverbs: “rather”, “preferably”, “moreover”, “alternatively”. But placing adverbs of manner in this position is now considered good style only in legal English (“It is his duty faithfully to execute the provisions…”).

I usually capitalize defined terms (the Employer, the Company), even in short contracts, although I claim it isn’t essential. I think a lot of clients, especially in Germany, expect it.

I often use double inverted quotation marks, because they are used in Germany and the USA.

Similarly, for a readership that includes Americans I write abbreviations like Mr. and Dr. with a full stop, and even Ms. (although it doesn’t stand for anything). I imagine that if I write Dr or Mr they may think, not ‘this is British English’, but ‘this translator is uneducated’.

If a text is supposed to be in British English, I sometimes use the -ise spelling, because so many people don’t know -ize is acceptable in the UK too.

Ditto avoiding the serial comma. From Get it write:

The Texas Law Review Manual on Usage and Style, considered highly authoritative in legal circles, insists on the use of serial commas, as do a number of other reputable style manuals. The Lawyer’s Book of Rules for Effective Legal Writing, by Thomas R. Haggard, says “The serial comma is essential in legal writing because it promotes clarity” (17). Consider this sentence:

Mrs. Jones left all her money to her three children: Huey, Dewey and Louie.

Without the serial comma, the sentence does not clearly indicate that the three children are to be given equal shares of the inheritance. Quite possibly (especially if Huey were a jerk), Huey would get half the money, and Dewey and Louie would have to split the other half.

(The serial comma and the -ize spelling are standard in U.S. English, but in the UK they are associated with the Oxford University Press, which happens to publish a number of widely used style handbooks, such as New Hart’s Rules).

Swiss Tony, at Will I be Barred?, ponders the Bar Vocational Course while doing a pre-course test:

I started on Contract Law. I enjoyed that. I got good marks for it. I understood it all. So the first 10 questions. Offer and Acceptance. The Postal Rule. Easy peasy. I can do that standing on my head. offers, counter offers, silence, auctions, telex machines, Butler Machine Tool, Boots Pharmacutical, Hyde v Wrench, bring them on, I can do them in my sleep.

I got 3/10. ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I am now too scared to try then next 10. I only have another 2490 questions to do and I am like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Worst thing about it, I used my text books and still got 3/10!!!

If I thought I was worried before, I am in desperate need of a brain transplant.

I hope he’s not serious about Julie Andrews.

Sarah Dillon, of There’s Something about Translation, like me, reads a lot of blogs in a feed reader. She posts a list of 85 translator-related blogs.

One might add fucked translation, which reports on bad translations, with the subtitle ‘What happens when Spanish institutions give translation contracts to relatives or to some guy in a bar who once went to London and only charges 0.05€/word’.

Following my discovery of insoweitig, I was excited to encounter the verb injunct, which was new to me, in a lawyer’s article for the law section of the Times, I think (no, it was in the Law Society Gazette) – but when searching, I found only this comment:

“injunct”? Whatever happened to “enjoin”? Are lawyers, whose profession is based on purported precision of language, becoming so ill-educated that they are ignorant of the root verb of “injunction”?

Since an injunction (einstweilige Verfügung, gerichtliche Anordnung) can order you to stop doing something, or to start doing something, I wondered how to use the verb in a sentence.

But it appears from the Oxford English Dictionary that injunct has been around for a while. Definition: ‘To prohibit or restrain by injunction. Now in somewhat more general use’. First example, 1872, also 1887 – both U.S. Then 1890 in the UK.

Ghits indicate a common use: ‘to injunct publication’, for example in the Law Society Gazette article mentioned:

The Formula One boss had ­previously lost his application to injunct the ­publication of details, photographs and video footage of his sexual activities because by the time he got to court 435,000 hits had been made on the online version of the article, and the video footage had been viewed approximately 1,424,959 times

The verb enjoin seems much harder to use. ‘Enjoin publication’ can be found, in legal texts, in the sense of preventing publication. But it can also mean the opposite: ‘To prescribe authoritatively and with emphasis (an action, a course of conduct, state of feeling, etc.)’, says the OED, meaning 2, whereas meaning 3 ‘To prohibit, forbid (a thing); to prohibit (a person) from (a person or thing)’ is ‘Now only in Law’.

I was wondering whether to translate Anglo-amerikanisches Recht as Anglo-American law. I think I will. It used to seem a bit of a Germanism to me. But better than Anglo-Saxon law, which my employer in Erlangen once put in the Vorlesungsverzeichnis as my speciality.

Anyway, while I was comparing site:uk and site:de ghits, I came across a reference to Donald R. Black at MeinProf.de, the site where students can grade their teachers. I have some materials of his, which are wonderful, and he is qualified in the USA, Britain and Germany. Don’t know if the materials are available outside Berlin. I was pleased to see that the sole person who graded him gave him very good marks – all 1 (A), but a mysterious 2 for interest. I’m also not sure if the writer got the course title quite right.