Translating court names is a complex matter. So here is just one court name to discuss.

In a newspaper article reporting on a decision of the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) or the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG), you wouldn’t need to use the German name.

Bundesgerichtshof is usually translated as Federal Court of Justice. That is the term recommended by the Auswärtiges Amt. I don’t think we actually have to use their recommendations if they’re no good, but this one has a history and is widely used. One source of court name recommendations, plus diagram, is a PDF file on the Bundesjustizministerium site. And here is a page at the Auswärtiges Amt with terminology PDFs, including Deutsche Gerichtsbezeichnungen und ihre Übersetzungen in zehn Sprachen – German court names translated into ten languages (they also have a nice file on civil service terms).

I commented in an earlier entry that one of the IPKAT writers used German Supreme Court. In the comments, Birgit said that German Federal Court of Justice and German Federal Supreme Court are both commonly used for BGH, but for her, the former sounds like the Bundesverfassungsgericht (recommended translation: Federal Constitutional Court) and therefore confuses the reader.

The opposite seems true to me. To me, Supreme Court immediately reminds me of the Supreme Court of the USA, which is like the BGH and the BVerfG combined. If anything, Supreme Court makes me think of the Bundesverfassungsgericht.

The only problem I have with Federal Court of Justice is that it doesn’t immediately communicate a meaning. And of course, the word federal might confuse someone in the USA, where there are both state and federal legal systems and the distinction is different from the distinction in Germany.

I had a look at a BGH decision last week which was widely reported in English newspapers. It was a decision that euthanasia could be acceptable in certain circumstances (the word euthanasia is associated in Germany with a euphemism used in the Third Reich, so Sterbehilfe is preferred). If you do a Google search on German court euthanasia you can see a number of articles referring to the BGH. Examples:

A top German court … the Federal Court of Justice (BBC)
Germany’s federal high court … the federal court of justice … Germany’s highest civil court (Irish Times)
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice … the federal tribunal (physorg.com)

The only reference to Supreme Court I could find was in an older article which actually meant the Bundesverfassungsgericht.

However, stories like these can usually be traced back to one dpa report, so the results may be biased.

The situation is complicated, of course, by the fact that England now has a Supreme Court, formerly the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, which is pretty close to the BGH in function, although the Court of Appeal deal with more cases and is also an equivalent.

Actually, England always had a Supreme Court, or I would not be a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. This term means the Crown Court, the High Court and the Court of Appeal – not the House of Lords and not the magistrates’ and county court. It must still exist, which is a bit of an anomaly, in that the term Supreme Court in one meaning excludes the House of Lords and in the other meaning is its successor. The portmanteau one is the Supreme Court of Judicature, and the new one the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Do these language changes that seem to happy so often in the UK mean the terminology changes, as in the UK or at least England and Wales the term claimant is now used instead of plaintiff? But even if the time comes when German Federal Supreme Court is understood correctly in England, it won’t alter the fact that it is confusing in the rest of the world.

How you handle the name of a German court in an English text varies, of course, depending on the purpose of the text and the knowledge of the likely reader. In most contexts, I would advise leaving the German name in there somewhere, because if the English name used is ambiguous and the translation gets back to Germany, it saves confusion. Take the latest IPKAT entry (I like the first sentence), where we read of a German district court. District court has different meanings within the USA and elsewhere, so the fact that Amtsgericht is named in German is helpful. There is later a reference to the Regional Court of Berlin, which emphasizes that District Court is indeed being used for the Amtsgericht.

LATER NOTE: Here is a weird example of BGH, in an article about a BGH decision posted on a site connected with the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and also here – it uses two terms for BGH without making it clear that these are synonyms:

Federal Supreme Court allows preimplantation diagnosis

… This opinion was shared by both the Berlin Regional Court, which dealt with the case in May 2009, as well as the Federal Court of Justice. Now, the 5th Senate of the Supreme Court in Leipzig concluded on 6 July that the doctor was not in breach of the Embryo Protection Act.

The UK government has just started a website inviting people to let them know what laws they want changed. It’s called Your Freedom. Three suggested categories are: restoring civil liberties, repealing unnecessary laws, and cutting business and third sector regulations (‘third sector’ means charity and not-for-profit organizations). It sounds like a good idea. I can’t quite explain why, together with the Nick Clegg video introducing it, it has a bit of a Monty Python ring to it.

I know one can complain to the German government, but not quite so directly, as far as I know. Otherwise I would like to make a complaint or two about yesterday’s election, particularly the result.

(UK site tweeted by Konstantin)

There are priorities in Fürth.

Meanwhile, there’s a story at fucked translation of a ‘bad pass’ by Özil reaching Spanish as a ‘fake passport’.

Here’s the source, at Malaprensa:

En la noticia de Bild, que es simplemente un comentario al partido con Inglaterra, Hiddink dice:

Guus Hiddink (türkischer Nationaltrainer): „Schade, dass Özil sich für den falschen Pass entschieden hat. Er ist ein moderner Fußballspieler, den ich in meinem Team gut gebrauchen könnte.

Que traducido por Google translator, es:

Guus Hiddink ( entrenador del equipo turco nacional): ” Lástima que Özil eligió el paso equivocado. Él es un futbolista moderno , bien podría utilizar en mi equipo.

Actually, since Bild was avoiding anglicisms – if not particularly on that date – it wasn’t a bad pass, nor a fake passport, but the wrong passport – if Özil had chosen the Turkish passport, he would have been in Hiddink’s Turkish team.

LATER NOTE: I see the story has got further. In fact, Google has a mass of links on the ‘Özil fake passport claim scandal’.

Yesterday BILD claimed it was appearing without any English words. I can’t confirm this. I do wish commentators would pronounce ‘Stephen Gerrard’ with emphasis on the first syllable of his surname.

How to pronounce Steven Gerrard.

I found another call for avoiding anglicisms from a publication called Deutsche Sprachwelt in Erlangen:

Anläßlich des WM-Achtelfinalspiels zwischen Deutschland und England am Sonntag ruft die DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT ganz Deutschland dazu auf, während des gesamten Wochenendes entschlossen auf Anglizismen und englischsprachige Lieder zu verzichten. „Setzen wir ein Zeichen, daß Deutschland hinter der deutschen Mannschaft und hinter der deutschen Sprache steht!“, forderte der Chefredakteur der Sprachzeitung, Thomas Paulwitz.

Instead of public viewing (which I did see in an advert in BILD), Rudelgucken should be used. Ferrero and kicker have produced an album containing words like goal, facts, and Team-Sticker.

Meanwhile, the Apotheken are inspired:

The adidas slogan Impossible is nothing also deserves consideration – it is claimed to mean something different from Nothing is impossible.

Wool shop:

(Thanks to Chris Irwin for the Zeit reference to avoiding German in BILD)

Back to a topic we seem to have forgoten too soon: Lena singing Satellite.

When I first heard the song, I didn’t like the lyrics. I realize the music is quite catchy, Lena apparently sings it faster than the writers intended, she dances well, at least in the video, she doesn’t dress up in a bizarre evening costume or strip off in the middle. But the lyrics are old-fashioned in concept, with an attempt to make them sound fun, I suppose, by additions like ‘I painted my toenails for you’.

I don’t mean to knock Lena, I just thing the song could have been better.

But other people don’t like the song lyrics either. Then again, I suddenly realized that many commentators simply don’t understand the English!

One ‘Tusnelda’ offers a critique plus ‘translation’. Tusnelda übersetzt: Heute, Satellite von Lena!

Der Text auf Deutsch:

Ich ging überall für dich hin,(und???)
ich habe mir sogar die Haare für dich gemacht. (toll, sollte man das nicht immer machen?)
Ich habe neue Unterwäsche gekauft, in blau, (wo denn??)
und ich trug sie gleich am nächsten Tag. (klar, die wäscht man ja auch vorher!!)

Tusnelda, this is all well and good, but ‘the other day’ means ‘a few days ago’, not ‘on the next day’. Incidentally, ‘underwear dyed blue’ seems to have escaped everyone.

‘Love, I’ve got it bad for you’ does not mean ‘Liebster, es steht schlecht für dich’ but ‘Liebster, ich bin in dich verknallt’. ‘My aim is true’ means ‘genau’ – I always hit the target.

Incidentally, Thusnelda or Tussi is used pejoratively in German. Whether this has anything to do with the historical Thusnelda I don’t know. She was apparently the wife of Arminius (Hermann of the battle of the Teutoburger Forest), was taken captive to Rome, gave birth to their son Thumelicus there – he is thought to have died as a gladiator in his teens.

I haven’t seen any England flags yet.