IPKAT (aka ‘the’ IPKAT) occasionally posts an entry called Translation Watch. This is directed at the slowness of the European Court of Justice in providing translations, especially of the opinions of Advocates General. I’ll quote one in full (published on January 8th).

bq. The IPKat notes that the ECJ has delivered its judgment in the Rolex case concerning Council Regulation (EC) No 3295/94 of 22 December 1994 laying down measures concerning the entry into the Community and the export and re-export from the Community of goods infringing certain intellectual property rights and criminal penalties thereunder, even though the Advocate General’s decision hasn’t been translated into English yet. More on this case from the IPKat anon.

Now, for the first time I think, there is a cry of joy, or in fact a purr, recording that the ECJ has reacted:

bq. On 6 January the IPKat announced the welcome if long-overdue arrival on the ECJ website of the Advocate General’s opinion in Koninklijke KPN Nederland NV v Benelux-Merkenbureau on the registrability of composite words (in that case POSTKANTOOR, the Dutch for “post office”). The IPKat is now purring with gratitude at Mary Leger, of the ECJ, who has emailed us with the good news that the Court’s full judgment will be handed down on Thursday 12 February, more than two years after the date of the Advocate General’s Opinion. Thank you, Mary.

I believe the Advocates General’s (I had to think about that apostrophe) opinions are given to freelance translators and the judgments done in-house, but I’m not sure. Why a particular translation is delayed in a particular case I can’t say. It’s no doubt easier to tolerate if you can read French, I mean legal French, or some other EU language, as well as English.

In Lenz Blog (the English version), Friedrich Lenz describes a method of displaying an EU directive on EUR-Lex and from there obtaining a list of implementing legislation of the member states. The method is described in German in a comment on Lenz’ German blog.
For an example in German, see here.

Isabella Massardo in Taccuino di Traduzione reports on a story in today’s Guardian.
The Foreign Office turned down a young Russian’s application for a 12-week course on English in Scotland, apparently on the grounds that she might not understand the language.

bq. Among the reasons for her rejection was one which said: “Given that you state you will need to resit your English exam in November, you cannot satisfactorily explain why you have chosen to attend an English course in Scotland rather than your other options of Oxford or Cambridge, where you should face less difficulty understanding a regional accent.”

Of course, it’s actually easier for foreign students to understand most Scottish accents than English ones, perhaps with the exception of Glaswegian. When a colleague and I took a group of German students to Britain many years ago, and the man in charge of the hostel near Edinburgh spoke Glaswegian, they thought he was joking.

The Foreign Office is now backpedalling. Apparently this reason is not one of those permitted by law in any case.

Similar to the German word of the year is the Lake Superior State University Banished Words List. The 2004 list contains items such as metrosexual, bling-bling, embedded journalist and captured alive.

Since last Monday, Jim Meddick’s comic strip Monty has been playing with the idea that U.S. home cartoonists are so expensive that Monty Comics has relocated its production overseas. This is reported in Lifechanges…Delayed. As Carter writes:

bq. The drawings have been changed to something vaguely Mesopotamian in style, while the dialogue is made to sound “foreign.” The grammar and word order, for the most part, are standard English, except for the use of irregular punctuation — a reversed inverted question mark (¿, but flipped on its axis) and an inverted exclamation point (¡) — and odd phrasings.

Here’s an example:

When I was first learning the law, I learnt that although general British English accepts either judgement or judgment as the spelling, preferring judgement, legal English prefers judgment. And I find that in the law reports too:

‘Transcript of the Handed Down Judgment of Smith Bernal Reporting Limited’

(a case selected at random from the BAILII site, which collects cases and legislation and has links to other international collections).

I didn’t realize there was any discussion about this in the U.S.A. – I thought it was always spelt (or spelled) judgment there – , but I see that as long ago as 31st December 2003, Blogbook had an entry on the topic.

bq. My preference has always been to omit the initial “e” for one simple reason: my 1L Civil Procedure professor told the class that “there is no ‘e’ in the word judgment – wait, I mean there is only one ‘e'”.