Category Archives: books

Book on German criminal procedure/Der Strafprozess – BDÜ Fachverlag

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The BDÜ publishes a series of books of varying quality. This looks useful – but I haven’t seen it yet: a summary of German criminal procedure written by a public prosecutor, intended for translators and interpreters.

“Der Strafprozess – Eine Einführung für Gerichtsdolmetscher und -übersetzer”

Verfasst von Staatsanwalt Rainer Kock gibt dieser Band Dolmetschern und Übersetzern, die für die Staatsanwaltschaften und Gerichte tätig sind oder werden möchten, einen zusammenfassenden Überblick über den Gang eines Ermittlungs- und Strafverfahrens sowie über die strafprozessualen Rechtsbehelfe und Rechtsmittel.

Der Autor stellt die wichtigsten juristischen Begriffe und auch schwierigen Probleme in Kombination mit praktischen Beispielsfällen so dar, dass Dolmetscher und Übersetzer sie mühelos verstehen und in ihrer Tätigkeit den Verfahrensbeteiligten in ihrer Muttersprache vermitteln können.

Bestellen Sie (102 Seiten) für 14,00 Euro
zzgl. Porto- und Verpackungskosten online:

Hier klicken und bestellen.

Eine Leseprobe steht Ihnen hier zur Verfügung.

Don’t overlook the PDF or html sample they offer. You’ll also find a link to a volume on civil procedure, which I recommend.

The rest of the publications linked (click on Publikationen) may also be interesting. Corinna Schlüter-Ellner’s Juristendeutsch and Treffende Verben in der deutschen Rechtssprache is first-rate. For translators out of German, the Juristendeutsch gives synonyms for weird legalese. These used to be hard to get hold of.

Grant and Cutler dictionaries/Rechtswörterbücher

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I recently received an indirect query from someone studying legal translation in the UK who wants to buy a German-English law dictionary. There was a list of the dictionaries currently available at Foyles, into which Grant & Cutler has now been integrated (I remember Grant & Cutler near Embankment Station, before it moved closer to Oxford Street and now to Foyles). Here’s the link, but it may change in time.

Title: Author: Description:
Recht Fachwörterbuch Kompakt. Law concise dictionary.: German<>English Bugg, S. G. & Simon, H. Approx. 28.000 terms and more than 50.000 translations. With short German and English introductions to the German, British and American legal system.

Rechtsenglisch: Deutsch<>Englisches Rechtswörterbuch für jedermann Köbler, G. approx. 25.000 entries, 485 pages.
Dictionaries: Specialist & Technical: Legal. Published 2007. Price: £19.95

Wörterbuch Arbeit, Recht, Wirtschaft. Dictionary of Labour, Law and Business terms. Horstenkamp, C. Approx. 5,000 terms.
Dictionaries: Specialist & Technical: Legal. Published 2006. Price: £25.95

Wörterbuch Recht German<>English Bachem, W. & Hamblock, D. Approx. 56,000 terms.
Dictionaries: Specialist & Technical: Legal. Published 2008. Price: £42.99

If you click on the first entry, it says the book and CD ROM are temporarily out of print but cost £52. The paperback (I didn’t know about this) is available and costs £30.

In response, I was taken aback at the absence of Romain and Dietl, but on reflection think they may be unavailable and about to be published in new editions.

I’ve written about small law dictionaries before (here and here). I understand why the publishers like them: because they can sell them to German law students. But they are just not big enough to be much use. If the budget doesn’t run to more, I would advise against the Köbler, although I don’t know its latest edition. The editions I have seen have all been based on a standard and peculiar shortish word list, originally created in German and put into English or whatever other language is involved. Of the others, I slightly prefer the Bachem and I don’t find the extra material in the Langenscheidt much use, but if possible you should compare the two yourself.

The Horstenkamp was unknown to me so I bought a copy. It is out of print but can be got second-hand. I actually got a new copy, but I don’t think it’s that easy to find. This dictionary of labour, law and business terms was done by a colleague. It is actually a set of seven glossaries EN>DE and seven glossaries DE>EN. This disqualifies it for me even if it were bigger, as I don’t want to spend so much time leafing through it. True, there are two global indexes in the back, which somewhat helps. The areas are:
Labour – Arbeit
Business – Wirtschaft
Education/Training – Bildung/Ausbildung
European Union – Europäische Union
Law – Recht
Politics – Politik
Health and Safety – Arbeitssicherheit

The labour part looks OK, but in particular the EU and law sections are very small and it looks more like an interpreter’s private glossary. It also has things like
sich schuldig bekennen – plead guilty (looks like a reverse of an EN>DE entry)
vorsätzlich – wilful; premeditated (Vorsatz is intention, not premeditation)
Pflichtverteidiger – duty solicitor (again, was this generated from EN>DE?)
Gewohnheitsrecht – common law (should be custom)

Schweitzer International Bookstore

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Have I recommended the Schweitzer legal bookshop in Munich before? I’ve only been once and they had an eclectic selection of law books in English in the basement. Don’t know if that’s still the case. More interesting was a list of books, for example German law in English, which I got hold of years ago. What I didn’t realize is that its successor and various materials are now available online.

Schweitzer Fachinformationen

If you click on International Bookstore, you will find a number of links to newsletters, including special editions of newsletters, in the form of PDFs with details on relevant literature:

Spezial-Ausgaben des ILFB-Newsletters /
Newsletter – special edition
ILFB Spezial: Arbitration
ILFB Spezial: Germany
ILFB-Spezial: Contracts – Forms – Drafting
ILFB-Spezial: Insolvency
Sonderheft: International Corporate Reporting
ILFB-Spezial: Intellectual Property
ILFB-Spezial: Securities Law & Regulations
ILFB-Spezial: Joint Ventures & Strategic Alliances
ILFB-Spezial: Estate Planning – Trusts
ILFB-Spezial: Private Equity
ILFB-Spezial: Islamic Business & Finance
ILFB-Spezial: Business Crime
ILFB-Spezial: Company Law Reform Act

The newsletters relate to books on law, economics and tax, and you can subscribe to them.

From the special newsletter on Germany (August 2011), here is a typical book description from page 37 (I have this book by Singh and it looks very good – English texts on administrative law are not so easy to get – but I haven’t got round to mentioning it yet).

German Administrative Law in Common
Law Perspective
Singh, Mahendra P., 2nd edition 2001
ISBN 3540423656, 377 p.
(Springer Verlag)
Hardback,€ 85,55
A thoroughly revised edition of the author’s book on German Administrative Law, first published in 1985. From the perspective of a common law jurisdiction the author presents the basic framework of German administrative law, along the lines administrative law is understood in the English speaking world. It covers all the essential elements of German administrative law. It is updated to include the latest developments and the impact of EC law in different spheres.
Contents:
Nature, Scope, Growth of German Administrative Law. Legislative Powers of the Administration: Delegated Legislation. Administrative Powers: Administrative Act. Administrative Powers: Contracts, Private-Law Acts, Real Acts, and Planning. General Principles of Judicial Review. Judicial Review of Discretionary Powers. Administrative Courts. Judicial Remedies & Procedure. Liability of the Public Authorities. The Basic Law Grundgesetz). Law on Administrative Proceedings of 25 May 1976 (VwVfG). Code of Administrative Court Procedure (VwGO). An Illustrative Judgment.

Great work by Bettina Kube.

There’s a bookshop from the same chain in Nuremberg, but it doesn’t have a brilliant selection on international law. Maybe others do.

The Lost German Slave Girl/Eine Deutsche als Sklavin in Louisiana?

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Here is yet another gratuitous book report.

The Lost German Slave Girl. The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans, by John Bailey, Atlantic Monthly Press 2003

This book was a present from my friend and fellow-translator Karen in Denver (thanks, Karen!). I read it quite a few weeks ago, so my report is rather vague now.

John Bailey is an Australian lawyer who has now turned to writing, and he discovered this story when he was researching the details of law relating to slavery in Louisiana. Sally Miller was the ‘lost German slave girl’, who won a case freeing her from slavery because a person who was Caucasian could not be a slave. It’s a fascinating story and it throws some light on the situation of slaves who could not be freed from slavery. There’s also a fair amount about the circumstances in which the Müller family from the Alsace emigrated to the USA, following years of pillaging by French troops, bad harvests and ice in summer (apparently resulting from volcanic eruptions in the West Indies, the Philippines and Indonesia from 1813-1816 – so tonight I will be watching the arte documentary on ‘The year without a summer’).

From an interview with John Bailey:

My plans unraveled, when one day, in the quiet corner of a law library on a university campus in Louisiana, as I struggled to bring some semblance of order to my unruly and ever expanding manuscript, I opened a volume of the Louisiana law reports for 1845. There I met Sally Miller, the Lost German Slave Girl. I was immediately enthralled by her story. By the end of the day, I had shoved my notes on lawyers, judges and politicians into my bag, and opening a fresh page in my diary, had began to jot down ideas for an entirely different project – this one, on the saga of Sally Miller’s bid for freedom.

One feature of the book is that while it cloaks the story in mystery – the witnesses in the trial are obviously long dead – at the same time it often knows exactly what the weather was like or what the main characters were thinking. This is part of the genre ‘bringing history to life’, I think. For a long time I was convinced that I was never going to know anything more about the truth or falsity of the story, but in fact more information was revealed at the end, which made the end of the book more satisfying than I had expected.

A bit of research on the Internet revealed that the story has been told before. Curiously, there is a 2007 American book on the subject, which looks similar to Bailey’s: The two lives of Sally Miller: a Case of Mistaken Racial Identity in Antebellum New Orleans, by Carol Wilson. You can read quite a bit of this on Google Books.

The other most stupid book you read as school reading/Das andere blödeste Buch, das du während der Schulzeit als Lektüre gelesen hast

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I know this meme is getting really boring, and I should not go back and repeat an earlier entry, but I forgot I wanted to rant about a long poem, rather than a book, that I think we did for O Level. It was a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called The Wreck of the Deutschland.

I never really ‘got’ Gerard Manley Hopkins, but I understood we are suppose to venerate him and recognize his brilliant originality in devising stuff like sprung rhythm. I couldn’t even appreciate this much in short poems.

You can get an impression of this work on youtube nowadays. I must say this brings back all the negative feelings I felt then. Here is the text (beginning – it gets quite long):

To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875

PART THE FIRST

1

THOU mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, 5
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

I didn’t know about the Leytonstone connection, though.