Category Archives: translation

German customs attempts English

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Volker Weber proves that online machine translation is at least no worse than what the Cologne Customs Office can do.

Antrag auf Befreiung vom Zollflugplatzzwang
Application for liberation of the inch airfield compulsion

PDF of the original.

A web search reveals that this version is used at least in Erfurt too.

Some years ago some German courts provided forms containing German and a Denglish translation, into which the translator who was commissioned had to type the not-yet-translated bits. A colleague used to come into college and use the secretary’s typewriter to do this. I suppose they may still do it with PDFs. It was always an eye-opener to see that the courts were incapable of ordering a comprehensible translation, and it wasn’t much of an incentive to do better.

Linguistica Antverpiensia: Themes in translation studies

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Trevor pointed this series out to me. I can completely missed it.

Linguistica Antverpiensia new series: Themes in translation studies

In particular, an issue in 2013 on legal translation:

No 12 (2013)
Research models and methods in legal translation

I will be coming back to this. This looks promising:

Exploring near-synonymous terms in legal language. A corpus-based, phraseological perspective
Stanislaw Gozdz-Roszkowski

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the extent to which a corpus-based, phraseological approach can be effectively applied to discriminate among near-synonymous, semantically-related terms which often prove troublesome when translating legal texts. Based on a substantial multi-genre corpus of American legal texts, this study examines the collocational patterns of four legal terms ‘breach’, ‘contravention’, ‘infringement’ and ‘violation’, first in the genre of contracts and then in the multi-genre context of the entire corpus. The findings highlight the area of overlap as well as specificity in the usage of these terms. While collocational constraints can be argued to play an important disambiguating role in the semantic and functional analysis of both source and target text items carried out by translators prior to the interlingual translation, this study emphasizes the applicability of the phraseological approach to English source texts.

You can get the whole document as a PDF. I will return to it in a separate entry.

These struck me too:

Die notarielle Urkunde im italienisch-deutschen Vergleich: Überlegungen zur Übersetzung von Immobilienkaufverträgen
Eva Wiesmann

Abstract

Notarial documents have some translation-relevant particularities which are strongly associated with the legal culture of the respective country. They are subject to competing influential factors – among others laws and administrative provisions, the facts of the case, form books, notary offices, and the recipient of the document – which determine the content, the specific structure and the language of notarial documents. In addition to the basic parameters of translation, translators should know and tackle the common features and the differences between the notarial documents of the countries concerned in order to produce a professional translation. This paper examines the most important common features and differences between Italian and German real estate sales contracts and presents the implications for translations from Italian into German against the background of the basic parameters of translation.

and

Investigating legal information in commercial websites: the Terms and conditions of use in different varieties of English
Federica Scarpa

Abstract

The Terms and conditions of use which are embedded in commercial websites provide a standardised legal model based in common law which exemplifies the increasingly influential role that English plays in international and intercultural commercial and legal settings, but also how deeply rooted legal knowledge is in socio-cultural values and national cultures. Using a small monolingual corpus of Terms and conditions of use drafted in English and embedded in the commercial websites from different countries of origin and legislations based both on common law and civil law, the paper investigates the extent to which different layout/content and language features are displayed by: (1) ELF Terms and conditions translated from different languages/legislations, and (2) ENL non-translated Terms and conditions drafted in different ‘core’ varieties of English. The aim is to show that the English intralingual variation of this highly structured and conventionalised legal format reflects in fact the existing disparities in legal practice among various national legislations, even among systems belonging to the common law family. International legal models such as the one investigated should consequently be considered as “globally-relevant STs” (Adab, 1998, p. 224), i.e. flexible text formats that have been adopted by most countries but at the same time allow for local socio-cultural aspects to influence the construction of legal discourse.

How not to market yourself as a translator

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‘Cold email’ from another translator, beginning ‘Hello’ (without my name), offering services, enquiring about my ‘specialisms’, offering 20% off his book (on how to improve one’s translation sales!), and ending with a link to ‘unsubscribe’.

Also advertising a ‘manually vetted translator database and project management system (under development, open for applications that will be processed in October – feel free to browse the site in its current state)’.

I seem out of line with some colleagues once again, although the author’s website quotes only part of Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza’s review in the ITI Bulletin but omits the following:

…I’m sorry to say that The translation sales handbook felt to me like a ‘work in progress’. …I believe that its potential is not fully developed. …A professional editor could possibly spot typos, detect repetitions, indicate the lack of relevance of certain sections …

It looks as if the email was sent to many ITI translators. Reactions varied but were on the whole not positive.

‘Legal Language’, Economist article revisited

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In November 2012 I referred to a new Economist article encouraging lawyers to translate (Economist on translation and the law). The article was recommending translation as a good career prospect for underworked lawyers. There was particular reference to TransPerfect.

At that time I don’t think there were any comments on the article, but there are twenty-one now. The article and my blog post were on November 10, and the comments – largely by translators – started on November 14. An interesting discussion.

Here’s part of a comment by NYCLanguageLawyer:

I am also a US qualified lawyer working in document review in Spanish and Portuguese. I have been steadily employeed in these temporary projects for quite some time, but inoalls is correct, these projects do not lead to permanent employment. I also agree that these law firms these law firms that hire people like us do not realize the full benefit of having someone who is not only fluent in the language, but able to act as a liasion between them and their foreign clients. I recently worked on a review in which the documents captured were clearly not what the firm had been looking for. I asked to see a list of the search terms and it was no wonder they got the result they did, they simply translated English legal terms into Portuguese, not taking into account the variations in the legal systems. I mentioned this to the supervising attornesy and gave them a list of more specialized terms to search for. This is an example of how firms are not making an investment in associates who bring languages to the table.

Transius conference on law, translation and culture

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Transius conference on law, translation and culture, in Geneva, 24-17 June 2015.

Transius is the Centre for Legal and Institutional Translation Studies at the University of Geneva. The only one of its members I’ve heard of (which means nothing, as they specialize in a variety of languages) is Suzanne Balansat-Aebi, who wrote a paper (2007) Probleme beim Übersetzen englischer Vertragstexte (PDF) which is rather good. I see she actually translates, which cannot be said of all those who write about the theory of legal translation. With these conferences, you have to be careful to distinguish between language in the EU (all languages of legislation regarded as originals, not translations; some legislation drafted by non-native non-lawyers), in Canada (lots of FR>EN translation using terminology of its own) and other areas of legal translation.

Here’s the lowdown on the 2015 conference from the above link:

The 2015 conference will combine keynote lectures, parallel paper presentations, a poster session and several thematic roundtables, so that all participants, from high-level experts to translation trainees, can benefit from the exchange of experiences. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

problems and methods of legal translation in professional settings
terminological and lexicographical issues in legal translation
legal translation competence and professional profiles
sociological and deontological issues in legal translation
the use of corpora and computer tools for legal translation
the role of translation in multilingual lawmaking, law application and adjudication
interdisciplinarity of legal and institutional translation
economic and financial translation in institutional settings
scientific and technical translation in institutional settings
quality assurance and management practices in institutional settings

Roundtables with speakers from various organisations will focus on the last four topics.

FIT Congress in Berlin

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The FIT Congress, which I am not at, is going on in Berlin at the moment.

This means that a lot of tweeting is going on (hashtags #fitcongress or #FITcongress, I gather – I am only seeing what comes direct from people I follow).

Thus I gather that there is a marketing block in which Chris Durban is calling for action (picture).

This was preceded by a talk by Martina Wieser on using a blog for marketing purposes. Here is the weblog of Martina Wieser and Norma Keßler. Their blog is integrated into their website and has occasional posts, all aimed at a marketing effect (but what isn’t?).

My blogroll has gone and I have only begun to put together separate pages with useful links, I’m afraid.

SMALL RANT: Two of three things I received in the post were wrong. Instead of sending me the latest edition of Corinna Schlüter-Ellner’s Juristendeutsch, the BDÜ Fachverlag sent a book by Renate Dockhorn on Trados, of all things. On my complaint by email, they replied as follows:

Vielen Dank für Ihre Nachricht.
Wir sind ab sofort bis zum 06.08.2014 auf dem FIT-Weltkongress 2014.
Ab Donnerstag, den 07.08. 2014 sind wir wieder wie gewohnt für Sie zu erreichen.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Ihre BDÜ Weiterbildungs- und Fachverlags GmbH

***

Thank you very much for your email.
The office is not occupied until August 6th, 2014, as we are celebrating the FIT Worldcongress in Berlin.
We will be back in the office from August 7th, 2014.

Kind regards

I’m not holding my breath, but wondered how one might understand ‘The office is not occupied until August 6th’.

I also received a repayment of tax from HMRC, sent to my German address which was not relevant to the tax return. Since Deutsche Post does not understand foreign postal codes when forwarding abroad – it is incapable of putting a gap in the middle – , I am not very happy with this. The letter took a month to reach me.