A German lawyer, fully qualified and practising, may qualify as a specialist and describe himself or herself as Fachanwalt / Fachanwältin für Familienrecht, for example.
Here’s information in German at Juracafe.

This is an additional qualification. These are the types available till now:

* Fachanwalt für Arbeitsrecht: qualified employment law specialist
* Fachanwalt für Familienrecht … family law
* Fachanwalt für Insolvenzrecht … insolvency law
* Fachanwalt für Sozialrecht … social security law
* Fachanwalt für Steuerrecht … tax law
* Fachanwalt für Strafrecht … criminal law
* Fachanwalt für Verwaltungsrecht … administrative law

The following have now been added (see Handakte WebLAWg):

Fachanwalt für Medizinrecht … medical law
Fachanwalt Miet- und Wohnungseigentumsrecht … landlord and tenant law and the law of freehold apartments
Fachanwalt für Verkehrsrecht … road traffic law
Fachanwalt für Bau- und Architektenrecht … construction law and law relating to architects
Fachanwalt für Erbrecht … probate law
Fachanwalt für Transport- und Speditionsrecht … transport and haulage law

The qualification is not that easy to get. You have to go on a special course of at least 120 hours, you have to do and pass written exams. You have to prove that you did a certain number of cases in the field in question in the last three years (between 60 and 120, depending on the subject area), and to keep the qualification you have to go to at least one course of continuing education every year.

David Truex has information on finding specialist family lawyers worldwide.

Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words had an entry this week on reading the Riot Act.

bq. These days, it’s just a figurative expression meaning to give an individual or a group a severe scolding or caution, or to announce that some unruly behaviour must cease. But originally it was a deadly serious injunction to a rioting crowd to disperse.

Apparently, the Riot Act had to be read out very carefully and without omitting any words, or it would not be effective. During Jacobite riots c. 1715, this Act was passed, making it a felony if a group of twelve or more persons refused to disperse more than an hour after magistrates had told them to do so. The situation perhaps had some resemblance to that in the Ukraine this week.

It’s only in the more general modern meaning that ‘jemandem die Leviten lesen’ is an equivalent. The somewhat angry site GehMirNichAufDenSack.de, in its Floskeln fürs Volk, goes into little detail.

Michael Rowley (on the ITI Gernet mailing list) says it derives from the custom of an 8th century Bishop of Metz, who laid down that his clergy, whose morals he did not consider up to scratch, should have the relevant parts f the book of Leviticus, which treat of the rules of behaviour of the priests and Levites, read to them. The German Wikipedia says that Leviticus 26 was often used for reprimands in the Middle Ages.

Ein Wiki auf deutsch für technische Redakteure. Alexander von Obert hat auch einige Übersetzerseiten und -links.

Quite some time ago, Robin Stocks at Carob linked to Alexander von Obert’s Techwriter’s Wiki, or Wiki des Techwriters Home. This is all in German. There is a part for translators there too, with subcategories for Software, Texterstellung and Juristisches. It’s all very new as yet.

Alexander von Obert runs Übersetzerportal (frames), which has links to jobs, books for sale, dictionaries, to Techwriter’s Home (the original site from which all this developed), to Richard Schneider’s Nachrichtenportal (opens in a frame), always worth looking at, to Bruno Aeschbacher’s list of translators’ mailing lists and to Alexander’s calendar of events. The last, and perhaps other sections, should be taken over by the wiki.

On the Techwriter’s Home page, there are also a large number of links for translators.

In particular, Alexander runs mailing lists for literary translators (u-litfor) and the hoi polloi translators (u-forum). He thinks literary translators are brilliant. The trouble with a literary translators’ list is that half is interesting and half consists of requests to each other to find existing official translations into German of quotations that come up in other works.

wood s lot (November 24th) shows three textbook disclaimer stickers:

They are originally from Bifurcated Rivets, which has more.

wood s lot also gives links to some anti-evolution sites.

Schott’s Original Miscellany appeared in the UK in 2002 and became a bestseller. Ben Schott created a bizarre collection of useless facts, but the collection didn’t seem forced or twee or self-conscious. What sounds like a more self-conscious German equivalent appeared in August 2004, Ankowitschs Kleines Konversationslexikon. Meanwhile, Schott has been translated into German, and the translator adapted some of the lists to German, but if one is to believe ‘Welt am Sonntag’, not very convincingly (the number one German Christmas pop song being an unmeaningful category). It is in this German adaptation that Ankowitsch excels. Links all to amazon.de – might be worth looking at as a Christmas present – and the original might be useful for translators – it does have an index):

Schott’s Original Miscellany

Schotts Sammelsurium

Dr. Ankowitschs kleines…

I realized the translation had been adapted when I watched that strange TV programme, Elke Heidenreichs ‘Lesen!’.

I had to go to the Berlin Verlag website to find who was responsible for translating / adapting Schott into German:

bq. Aus dem Englischen unter Mitarbeit von Matthias Strobel u. a.

The following picture has nothing to do with the remembrance days in November, but shows the Germans getting ready for Advent. Each of these wreaths should get four tasteful candles implanted into it before next Sunday.