The Morning News describes itself as ‘a Web-based broadsheet, published weekdays, est. November 1999’.

I bookmarked it a few days ago, but I am rather late in linking to a May 23 story on jury duty in New York:

bq. 8:00 a.m. I awake in a panic for my first day of jury duty. It takes me 10 minutes to find the three alarm clocks that began blaring at 7:30. It is light out. Who knew? I haven’t been up this early since I last did jury duty four years ago. I scarf down breakfast: half a cup of plain oatmeal.

bq. I am nervous. Spending half a week passing harsh judgment on your fellow Manhattanites just seems so… well, when put like that, it sounds just like every other day. Continue reading →

Germans say Naher Osten, British the Middle East, Americans, at least the State Department, apparently the Near East.

Via languagehat, who is rather scornful of the whole thing, William Safire’s language column on the topic.

bq. Alistair Cooke of BBC fame called me with an assignment: ”The State Department still has a Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. The rest of the world calls that area the Middle East. Do something about this right away.” Continue reading →

Germans say Naher Osten, British the Middle East, Americans, at least the State Department, apparently the Near East.

Via languagehat, who is rather scornful of the whole thing, William Safire’s language column on the topic.

bq. Alistair Cooke of BBC fame called me with an assignment: ”The State Department still has a Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. The rest of the world calls that area the Middle East. Do something about this right away.” Continue reading →

This is a very confusing topic. I will try to be brief.

Why translate references at all? It is normally done in running text, but even in footnotes, even though some of these references will only ever be of use to a German law librarian, who will need them in German, not English. – So we will translate, to go with the flow.

Here is an example:

§ 812 Abs. 1 S. 1 1. Alt. BGB (I took this example from Simon and Funk-Baker’s Einführung in die deutsche Rechtssprache, referred to in an earlier entry).
To make it clearer, here is the text:

bq. Titel 26 – Ungerechtfertigte Bereicherung (§§ 812 – 822)
§ 812
Herausgabeanspruch
(1) Wer durch die Leistung eines anderen oder in sonstiger Weise auf dessen Kosten etwas ohne rechtlichen Grund erlangt, ist ihm zur Herausgabe verpflichtet. Diese Verpflichtung besteht auch dann, wenn der rechtliche Grund später wegfällt oder der mit einer Leistung nach dem Inhalt des Rechtsgeschäfts bezweckte Erfolg nicht eintritt.
(2) Als Leistung gilt auch die durch Vertrag erfolgte Anerkennung des Bestehens oder des Nichtbestehens eines Schuldverhältnisses.

(copied from dejure.org)

The first alternative in subsection 1 is the bit before the ‘oder’.

I would translate the reference in British English (BE) as

Section 812.1 sentence 1, first alternative, of the German Civil Code
or Section 812 (1) sentence 1, first alternative, of the German Civil Code
or Section 812 subsection 1 sentence 1, first alternative, of the German Civil Code Continue reading →

This is a very confusing topic. I will try to be brief.

Why translate references at all? It is normally done in running text, but even in footnotes, even though some of these references will only ever be of use to a German law librarian, who will need them in German, not English. – So we will translate, to go with the flow.

Here is an example:

§ 812 Abs. 1 S. 1 1. Alt. BGB (I took this example from Simon and Funk-Baker’s Einführung in die deutsche Rechtssprache, referred to in an earlier entry).
To make it clearer, here is the text:

Titel 26 – Ungerechtfertigte Bereicherung (§§ 812 – 822)
§ 812
Herausgabeanspruch
(1) Wer durch die Leistung eines anderen oder in sonstiger Weise auf dessen Kosten etwas ohne rechtlichen Grund erlangt, ist ihm zur Herausgabe verpflichtet. Diese Verpflichtung besteht auch dann, wenn der rechtliche Grund später wegfällt oder der mit einer Leistung nach dem Inhalt des Rechtsgeschäfts bezweckte Erfolg nicht eintritt.
(2) Als Leistung gilt auch die durch Vertrag erfolgte Anerkennung des Bestehens oder des Nichtbestehens eines Schuldverhältnisses.

(copied from dejure.org)

The first alternative in subsection 1 is the bit before the ‘oder’.

I would translate the reference in British English (BE) as

Section 812.1 sentence 1, first alternative, of the German Civil Code
or Section 812 (1) sentence 1, first alternative, of the German Civil Code
or Section 812 subsection 1 sentence 1, first alternative, of the German Civil Code Continue reading →

I went to Wessobrunn yesterday as I am translating a guide to the monastery. They show you glorious stucco and then forbid you to photograph it. The tour of one corridor with a view into another, and the Tassilo room, takes about 40 minutes. There isn’t time to linger on what you are most interested in, rather as in tours of stately homes, nor were there many books with good pictures on sale. The pictures on the Web are not very good either. There are some grainy shots at the monastery site, and fortunately one of a concert in the Tassilo room, although that doesn’t really do justice to the stucco, which is malachite green with a hunt going on: dogs and foxes (or badgers?) jumping through branches, grimacing faces between; oak leaves, sunflowers, acanthus leaves. What’s the good of having a camera with a ‘museum’ setting? Isn’t a photography ban tantamount to leading a person to sin?