Have a look at Dirk Paessler’s photo of the New Year fireworks in Nuremberg this year here
He took it, I conclude, from the roof (?) of the car park facing the Fleischbrücke. In fact, on a site for the Parkhaus Adlerstraße, there are some shots of the panorama.
Developments in civil law
From 1066 on, the central system of law was the common law, so called because it was common to the whole country, not local. The term later took on other meanings too.
When we talk about the history of the common law, we are usually thinking about civil law, which individuals are interested in developing, not criminal law, which is the prerogative of the state.
The common law courts were centred in London and decided what was law. This common law became increasingly rigid. There were a restricted number of actions that individuals could take. If a person had a problem for which no action existed, then however unjust it seemed, there was no remedy. And if there was a remedy, it was only damages.
The way in which this rigid system was alleviated was by people petitioning the Chancellor, the king’s right-hand man, for help. The Chancellor’s decisions gradually developed into a second, supplementary system of law known as equity. It was administered by the Court of Chancery.
Until 1875, there were now two systems of law: the common law and equity. They had separate court systems, and it was eventually decided that where there was a conflict between the two, equity should prevail. For example, equity created the trust, and trusts remained in effect in English law.
Equity originally means fairness, and it was so named because it was created to give a fairer treatment to those who suffered under the common law system. However, it was not always fairer than the common law.
Equity was never a complete system, because it was developed to fill in gaps in the common law. It created:
new rights, for example the rights of a beneficiary under a trust
new remedies, for example the injunction (an order of the court compelling a person to do something or restraining a person from doing something) and specific performance (an order of the court compelling a person to perform an obligation existing under a contract, rather than just to pay damages for non-performance.)
Equity eventually became just as rigid as the common law had been.
It is not difficult to understand how this situation arose, and how equity came into existence. What is more difficult is the role of equity today, after the two systems were merged in 1875. Both systems are now applied in all courts, but the distinction between them is still recognized today.
Equity today
Equitable remedies are discretionary: the court can decide whether or not to award them to the person who wins a case. If that person has behaved in a way the court does not approve, it may decide to award only damages, the common-law remedy (if appropriate). There is a maxim He who comes to equity must come with clean hands which applies here. There are a number of these maxims of equity, which are always amusing.
Equity plays a large role in the law of property and trusts. In land law, there are legal (common-law) rights, and equitable rights.
Some language notes:
The word law is sometimes used to mean common law as opposed to equity. When there were separate courts, an action was said to be at law or in equity. At law is short for at common law. Similarly, an action could be described as legal or equitable. Legal here means nach dem Common Law /gemeinem Recht, not rechtlich or gesetzlich.
An injunction is a court order to do or stop doing something, among other things. It can be interim or permanent. There is no single German equivalent, therefore. It might be an einstweilige Verfügung, for example. It might be Verfügung, Anordnung, Unterlassungsverfügung, depending on the situation.
Equity has other meanings. For example, a person may own a house with a mortgage on it. If the house is worth £200,000 and the mortgage is for £50,000, the equity in the house is £150,000. This is sometimes called the equity of redemption. If a house has lost value and is worth less than the mortgage, the term negative equity is used. This is a term frequently encountered in the press.
One might encounter the expression legal or equitable remedies in an otherwise harmless-looking contract. Here is a sentence someone on proz.com wanted to translate into German:
This paragraph does not limit any other remedies that X may have against Y as contained in this Agreement or in law or equity.
To translate this, you need to know whether the contract is now to apply in Germany. (Some translators ‘localize’ the legal small-print on software licences – really, this work should be done by a lawyer, who at least has professional insurance to cover legal work). If so, common law and equity are no longer relevant and it just means ‘any remedies whatsoever’. If the text refers to England and Wales, for instance, the better translation would be nach Common Law oder nach Billigkeitsrecht. Suggestions on ProZ included auf vertraglicher oder gesetzlicher Grundlage and aufgrund Gesetzes oder aus Billigkeitserwägungen. One could argue about that.
You might meet the term equity partner in a law firm, meaning a solicitor who owns a share of the firm, in contrast to salaried partner, who is more important than an associate solicitor but only receives a salary, not a share of profits.
This is probably enough to think about for today. Here is a nice simple explanation of equity (in the USA) on the Cornell University website, which I recommend for legal information.
Bevis, the Story of a Boy, by Richard Jefferies. It’s a boys’ book really, but I can remember wanting to build a boat the way Bevis did, while doubting his ability to float it. It was written in 1882. It’s not on Project Gutenberg, but it can be seen on Google Books, and free ebook versions can be found online.
This is a bit ambiguous, but assuming it’s meant seriously, one book translation I have mentioned before that I still find funny is Der tiefere Sinn des Labenz, a translation by Sven Böttcher of The Deeper Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. It takes obscure place names and uses them to denote things for which no one word exists. The German is a recreation, rather than a translation, and it contains the whole English original.
Liff (n.) A common object or experience for which no word yet exists.
Limassol (n.) The correct name for one of those little paper umbrellas which come in cocktails with too much pineapple juice in them.
Lindisfarne (adj.) Descriptive of the pleasant smell of an empty biscuit tin.
Labenz, das Ein allgemein bekannter Gegenstand oder eine vertraute Erfahrung, für den oder die bisher noch keine Bezeichnung existiert.
Lamboing, das Geräusch, mit dem eine Glühbirne den Geist aufgibt.
Here’s a related website.
Some recent novels have been translated into German by two (or more) translators. Not an established team of two translators who are both responsible for the whole, but two translators by the publisher’s decision, to get the translation on the market faster – presumably while the hype for the usually English-language original is still on.
Thus, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was translated from the ‘American’ by Bettina Abarbanell and Eike Schönfeldt, and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals had three translators (it apparently has more than one stylistic section, though).
Actually, Katy Derbyshire dealt with this in her blog love german books last August. She says that Dan Brown’s latest novel was translated by six translators in ten days.
But today I heard something funny on the Swiss literature programme Literaturclub, which was a repeat of the pre-Christmas one. I only heard the beginning and end because I was cleaning the stairs in between (kleine Hausordnung) and I didn’t particularly want to hear Gert Scobel. Iris Radisch commented on the two translators of Zone, by Mathias Énard. This was translated from the French by Holger Fock and Sabine Müller. 517 pages but only one sentence, yet two translators! And apparently there is a story within the story, read by the main character in the train, the last paragraph of which is quoted again later, and the two translators translated this paragraph differently.
I find this amazing. Not because the editor should have coordinated the translations better – how much can you coordinate? But because I think if I’d been translating half the book, the second half at least, I would have noticed the problem and pointed it out to the editor.
I don’t think I’ll be reading Ènard, though, partly because the book is apparently patterned on the Iliad, and I’m having a surfeit of Ulysses.
LATER NOTE: apparently the two translators of the Énard novel are a husband-and-wife team and do always work together – see comment.
Introduction to English law for translators and/or non-lawyers
Starting again: I started this series on 22 October 2008 and wrote 5 posts, which you can find via the IEL tag. The last post was on 8 March 2009 and was a bit messy.
By request I am starting again, so here’s a summary of the story so far.
Summary so far:
1. Introduction
A revised version of my old Erlangen teaching notes
2. Great Britain and Ireland: geographical and political terms
Terms: Great Britain, the British Isles, Ireland, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland
3. The United Kingdom and its three legal systems
Three jurisdictions: English law in England and Wales, Northern Ireland law in Northern Ireland (similar), Scottish law in Scotland (rather different).
4. English law
Started in 1066 (but no clean break) and later history, export of the system
5. History of English law
The courts, contract and tort (forms of action), real and personal actions, common law and equity
Terms touched on so far:
jurisdiction, Jurisdiktion, Gerichtsbezirk, Zuständigkeit
Rechtsprechung
executive, legislature, judiciary
a remedy
I am going to start again with a new post on equity and one on the common law. These are terms that cause translators a lot of grief, and I think the beginning of my treatment was very messy.
Let me repeat that this is a simplified, indeed over-simplified, summary that is intended to help people new to the subject orientate themselves in law and legal terminology. It has a tendency to generalize and could easily be criticized for that reason, but adding more detail would probably not serve its purpose.
One criticism I’ve received is recommending Wikipedia articles. I only recommend articles that I find helpful and reliable, and the fact that Wikipedia may contain errors somewhere or other does not alter the fact that some of its articles are ideal for this purpose. If you would prefer a book, one that I would recommend and that can be got second-hand is Dieter Henrich, Einführung in das englische Privatrecht – it’s in German, of course. It appeared in 1971 (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt) and there was a later edition published elsewhere, and even a 2003 edition, but as it presents simple accounts of English law in history, it is not out of date.