Exeter University has pages for beginners in German including some material on Why learn German?

There is sobering material, including links, about anti-German feelings in Britain. There are links on accentuating the positive. There is a list of ten reasons why to learn German.

I think it’s a shame that the last item, Lost in translation, regurgitates some apocryphal poor foreign-language advertising campaigns and a list of mistranslations from all over the world that I didn’t believe the first time I saw it:

bq. In a Bucharest hotel lobby: “The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret you will be unbearable.”

Enter “In a Bucharest hotel lobby” (in inverted commas) in Google and you get 785 hits, or at least I do.

Does anyone know where these two collections are debunked? I know they’re not all true, but the Urban Legends site is rather thin on the topic of mistranslations (although there is more than one page on the topic).

A firm of legal translators in Connecticut, Attorney Translation Services, is offering awards to U.S. law firms with the best sites in 11 foreign languages. Criteria include overall content, relevance to target audience, use of language and appearance; judges will be ‘bilingual attorneys’.

The press release is here.

I wouldn’t like to judge this. How do you choose between different kinds of firms – big ones that have amalgamated with German firms will have an advantage. I suppose Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe springs to mind, although they perhaps have an unfair advantage. And how many machine-translated sites will be submitted?

The crimeinfo website has been put together by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London (my old college). This site has been funded by rethinking CRIME & PUNISHMENT (correct use of capitals not guaranteed.

It may be a students’ site. There is a dictionary that is also on the CJS (Criminal Justice System of England and Wales) site, but maybe it’s used on other sites too. There is a photo gallery, showing, for instance, people carrying out community penalties. I wonder what you have to do to be sentenced to decorating a Romanian orphanage.

Thanks for the link to Sue Blackwell of the IAFL list. The IAFL site is also worth looking at, as is Webster’s FL homepage, which is a non-IAFL site on the same server.

Rainer Langenhan of Handakte WebLAWg pointed out this weblog, Sprachblog – Tipps zu deutscher Rechtschreibung und Grammatik. It is part of the site of Ines Balcik, co-author of a book on the subject, Pons Deutsche Grammatik und Rechtschreibung. The book appears to be partly directed at schoolchildren and written with a minimum of jargon and everyday examples. The author is a ‘Diplom-Fachsprachenexpertin’.

The weblog is very new and intended for non-linguists but to people who need to use language at work but have no time for thick books and don’t understand jargon terms. I gather from the comments on January 6th that it’s also not intended for all webloggers – and probably not for me.

Incidentally, I wish Germans wouldn’t always call the accusative the fourth case. It makes life very hard for those of us who learnt it as the second case. Obviously, they have no choice, since in German that’s correct, but I will continue to complain.

I always translate freiwillige Gerichtsbarkeit as non-contentious jurisdiction. The terms seem to be exact matches. A court has non-contentious jurisdiction over matters that do go to court, but don’t involve a dispute.

So I was surprised to see this: suggestions of non-litigious proce[e]dings, voluntary jurisdiction and out-of-court jurisdiction. It’s not a very authoritative source (the term Webster is not copyrighted) and the pig Latin version would not be much use. But has anyone heard of non-litigious – is it a term used in some common-law jurisdiction or other?

UK sites suggest non-litigious is often used as a description of alternative dispute resolution, which is something different: it means not going to court at all. The Oxford Dictionary of Law, however, does define non-contentious as non-litigious. Still, I’ve never encountered it.

I see it’s popular at ProZ too.

But Hill Taylor Dickinson define it my way. This is what they call non-litigious:

* Advising on and drafting contracts
* Advice on evidence gathering both pre and post-accident
* Advice on employment issues including contracts and redundancies
* Advice on Medical issues
* Advice on Indemnities and Insurance

And that’s a synonym for out-of-court.