What is a district court? Some people like to translate Amtsgericht or Landgericht as district court. But those are different. And so are the three district courts I know of.

There are district courts in Scotland.

bq. Currently there are 30 District Courts in Scotland. The District Court is at the bottom end of the court hierarchy in Scotland. It deals only with summary criminal matters. There are also certain offences, for example, an assault resulting in a broken bone, which cannot be heard in the District Court but must go to the Sheriff Court. The District Court can imprison for up to 60 days and impose a fine of up to level 4 (presently £2,500). The most common types of offences to be dealt with in the District Court are breach of the peace, assault, vandalism, theft (but not theft by housebreaking), speeding, vehicle excise, T.V. licencing, electricity fraud and other miscellaneous road traffic offences. There are a lot of other offences dealt with in the District Court on a less regular basis.

bq. The District Court is a lay court where a Justice of the Peace who is a lay person sits with a legally qualified clerk (in some areas Justices sit in threes). The only exception to this is stipendiary magistrate courts in Glasgow where the stipendiary magistrate sits on his/her own and is legally qualified and has the same powers as a sheriff who is sitting summarily (the difference between summary procedure and solemn procedure is that in summary procedure the judge sits on his own and in solemn procedure the judge sits with a jury).

This is rather like an English magistrates’ court – perhaps too peculiar to be used as a translation of Amtsgericht, and certainly too low in the hierarchy for Landgericht. Continue reading →

Via Delia Venables, an Irish lawyer’s blog: maccann.com. Entries only about one a month – I wouldn’t mind more. Strong on opinions.

The blogger, Seán Mac Cann, posts more frequently on his personal (non-legal) blog.

Both use frames, so I set my browser to open links in a new window.

La-Legal.com or Louisiana Legal now has a site for links called LegalBeetle (via Handakte WebLAWg), allegedly with over 20,000 links.

It has the irritating technique of presenting me all the headers in German, even though my browser’s preferred language is English. I would prefer English, German is OK too, but there are plenty of people in Germany who would rather read English or who don’t even understand German. It’s possible to register, so possibly that would help.

LATER REMARK: it seems I was too hasty, as so often. This time it gave me English headings, and there are flags at the bottom of the page so you can choose the language. I take it all back (but don’t know how to do strikeout – I would leave my earlier text there, but crossed out).

Further to the Scottish law sites mentioned recently. I have two glossaries of Scottish legal terms:

Green’s Glossary of Scottish Legal Terms, by A.G.M.Duncan, 1992, ISBN 0 414 01001 9

and Glossary: Scottish Legal Terms, Latin Maxims and European Community Legal Terms, published by Butterworths and The Law Society of Scotland, 1988, ISBN 0 406 02057 4 (the EU terms are in a separate section at the back)

Then there is Collins Dictionary of Law, by W.J. Stewart, 2nd ed. 2001, ISBN 0 00 710294, one of those paperback dictionaries usually of English legal terms that are not bad but not as comprehensive as Black’s for the USA or Creifelds for Germany. But Collins has a lot of Scottish terms in it, which is unusual. Collins can even be got as an e-book (Microsoft Reader).

I think the Butterworths must be out of print (I don’t even know if Butterworths have kept their name after being bought up by someone else).

Here’s a small electronic glossary, produced by the BBC in connection with the Lockerbie trial, which was governed by Scottish law (they declared a bit of the Netherlands Scottish land for the purpose). Here another glossary. Continue reading →

When it’s 35 degrees Celsius and supposed to be more the next day, what can you do but go swimming?

OK, it takes me over 30 minutes to get there, but I can read on the underground (better than driving). And where else can you go to a 25m x 16m indoor pool at 11.30 on a Saturday morning and find only four other people in the water? (Some were outside in the warm pool, some were next door at the open-air pool, where it’s too crowded to swim, and some kids were in the shallow pool). I was even able to do back crawl, but the asymmetrical wooden ceiling makes it hard to go straight.

An alternative would be a more expensive pool, like Palm Beach, now renamed Kristall Palm Beach (dreadful website). They have been drilling for warm mineral water. I understand that millions of years ago there was sea under the Franconian and Swabian Jura, but not why I should sit in an overcrowded small bath of it. Still, there is a swimming pool and it may be not too full in the mornings.

Or I could go to a real spa at Staffelstein and finish off with a visit to Vierzehnheiligen.

It’s about time they started a spa in Fürth again. The mail order firm Quelle is named after the original hot springs and you can still drink the water in the Stadtpark. The latest I heard was that they may be doing something on or near the Grundig site, where there are a couple of springs but there would have to be new drilling.

Pictures and German text on the Frankenalb in history (geology) here, and fossils here (unfortunately with watered-down country and western music).

Some translators’ professional associations have websites with electronic databases where you can look for a translator with the language combination and subject specialization you need. (I’ll make a separate entry on this) The qualifications you need to join a professional association vary.

There are also sites started by translators that allow translators to exchange information and offer their services and allow clients to look for translators. Usually anyone can register, but sometimes the sites inspect the translators’ qualification documents (for what that’s worth).

Here are some sites. I can’t begin to describe them fairly – I don’t use them. I have answered questions on ProZ under a pseudonym (this was when a number of FLEFO members visited ProZ to see what it was like) – ProZ collects a glossary of past transation problems and awards points in connection with terminology help.. I have decided not to comment in detail, as I might imply that one site lacks a feature if I am not thorough:

www.aquarius.net
www.proz.com
www.translatorscafe.com
www.translationdirectory.com

Aquarius is the oldest. I think Translatorscafe was set up by some as a competitor to Proz. It has a photograph of Adrian Melman in it (proving that what barristers say about wigs is true).
There must be more – what have I left out?

I’ve been meaning to write this up for some time. Today I received the ITI Bulletin and there was an article by Adrian in it with quotes from some of the marketing of translators on Translatorscafé; caption: ‚The good, the bad and the ugl sell themselves on the website’. So I decided the time had come to post this. It’s true that you can learn a lot from reading the CVs and advertising spiel of the contributors on these sites. On some sites, you are invited to suggest a slogan (to quote TonyTK at ProZ: ‚Deadline!? What deadline?’
How do you find a good translator? That’s a question for another occasion too, and it would need a long entry to answer it.