Ein englischer Richter in einem langen Betrugsprozess wusste nicht, was eine Schlafcouch ist.

bq. Despite having the concept described to him the judge failed to grasp the basics, asking again “But how can a bed be turned into a sofa?”.

Judge Sneddon Cripps (Sneddon ist wohl der Vorname) ist nicht der erste, der nicht alles versteht. Andere von anderen Richtern nicht verstandene Sachen: Linford Christies “lunchbox”, B & Q und Gazza. Definitionen u.a. hier:

bq. It’s all British stuff.
B&Q sells stuff for home improvement, Gazza is Paul Gascoigne (footballer) and Linford Christie’s lunchbox refers to the 1992 100m Olympic champion’s genitals.

Another summary:

bq. Mr Justice Harman probably set the gold standard for magisterial aloofness in 1990, when he appeared to have no idea who Paul Gascoigne was.
Gazza, then at the height of his post Italia ’90 fame, was suing Penguin Books for publishing an “unauthorised biography”.
Comic timing
The footballer’s lawyer Michael Silverleaf began his submission by saying: “Mr Gascoigne is a very well-known footballer.”
“Rugby or Association?” asked the judge, with impeccable comic timing.
Later, during evidence, Justice Harman again interrupted: “Isn’t there an operetta called La Gazza Ladra?”
“I could not say, my lord,” replied Mr Silverleaf.

Von RollOnFriday

The Jurastudentin finds Kühl on Strafrecht heavy going:

bq. Ich befürchte langsam, es liegt an den vielen Substantiven (1), die nicht sein müssten, würde man seinen Satz (2) flüssig aufbauen. Oder auch anders gesagt: Die Ursache (a) der langsamen Entstehung (b) von Furcht (c) könnte der hohe Anteil (d) von Substantiven (e), welcher bei aller Unnötigkeit (f) zu Unflüssigkeit (g) von Sätzen (h) führt, sein.

She can be glad she doesn’t translate the stuff into English. Mind you, legal English also often suffers from nominalization. It’s just different nominalization. To quote Butt and Castle on Modern Legal Drafting:

bq. This convention is not peculiar to legal writing; it infects all bureaucratic and official language. But it is endemic in legal documents. For example, parties to legal documents don’t ‘decide’ to do something; instead, they ‘make a decision’. They don’t resolve, but ‘pass a resolution’. They don’t ‘sever’ a joint tenancy, but ‘effect a severance’. This practice of nominalization might be thought to achieve a certain formality of tone, but it is at the expense of effective communication.

Still, I think I too would talk about an AGM passing a resolution rather than resolving.

I did find an article online, by Professor Maximilian Herberger, on ‘Unverständlichkeit des Rechts’. I’m sure it’s good, but the heading ‘Die Verständlichkeitsdebatte vor Inkrafttreten des Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuchs’ rather threw me.

While Googling for information on medieval city rights in Germany, I found this useful holiday information:

bq. The Pope’s Bavaria – Map and Information for Following in the Pope’s Footsteps

bq. Although Pope Benedict XVI didn’t have anything directly to do with the goings-on in Altotting, the town hosts one of Germany’s most celebrated shrines, the Chapel of Mercy. Altotting is Germany’s Lourdes, with the Chapel’s 13th century statue of the Blessed Virgin credited with numerous miracles. Altotting has been a place of pilgrimage in Germany for over 500 years.

Isabella links to LibraryThing, an online book catalogue service, free for the first 200 books, $10 thereafter.

I would find this useful so when I wanted to recommend a book to someone. The service doesn’t look quite like a proper academic bibliography. But you can enter books automatically if they are in the Library of Congress catalogue – or in amazon.com? I wonder if it’s better for the USA than Europe. You can enter books manually too though.

language hat mentions this too, and you can see his library (as far as entered) and that of Tim Spalding, the creator of the service.

You can add tags to books and explore other people’s libraries. You can have a private library if you prefer. Otherwise it could become a bit Flickr-ish. I could imagine looking at other people’s lists. I could also imagine some translators finding out a member has a particular book and pestering that member by email (presumably only if available) for a quotation.

There’s also a blog, where Tim says he’s added a few more requested social features. It looks as if Tim is constantly rethinking the system, so I am certainly going to give the service a try.

But I often find social features a bit odd. For instance, if you join flickr, you get people coming along and writing stuff like, ‘Wow, great picture!’ or ‘Yay!’ under your photos or adding you to their list of friends. (Like Live Journal, with this ‘friend of’ and ‘friend to’ distinction, active and passive). Isabella very kindly gave me a subscription to flickr, so I should not be so negative, but when I got the first mail from them saying, ‘You lucky ducky!’ I began to feel out of place. It’s either my age or the W.C.Fields in me.

There are references to other programs for cataloguing in language hat’s comments, including a Mac one and a Linux one.

I really do not intend to get involved in political discussion on this blog. I take both SPD and CSU free biros and bumph outside on Saturdays.

Still, I would just like to say some women seem very odd to me (and I’m not referring to Angela Merkel). How can someone call three of their children Donata, Gracia and Egmont?