Category Archives: courts

Interpreter’s oath/Dolmetschereid

Posted on by
2

Here’s a curious question from an ITI member. This is the interpreter’s oath, which is taken by all interpreters in courts in England:

I swear by Almighty God that I will well and faithfully interpret and make true explanation of all such matters and things as shall be required of me according to the best of my skill and understanding.

Gosh – haven’t they modernized that one?

The colleague thinks that ‘to the best of my skill’ is wrong and should be ‘to the best of my skills’, because ‘best’ is a superlative adjective and it implies comparison between at least two objects (actually, as a superlative, it would have to be three, because ‘better’ applies to two). He wants it changed.

I can’t see this at all. I am familiar with the legalese expression ‘to the best of my knowledge’ and ‘to the best of my ability’. These are uncountables, as are ‘skill’ and ‘understanding’ in the oath. ‘Skill’ can be countable too – a good source for information on countable and uncountable meanings is the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, which is now online. Now if ‘skill’ should be plural, then ‘understanding’ must be wrong too – which it isn’t! I think both ‘to the best of my skill’ and ‘to the best of my skills’ are correct English. However, although I find 27,000 ghits for the plural, I only find seven of them on UK sites. So if you are in Canada or India or the USA, ‘skills’ is OK here.

Most interpreters in Germany swear an oath, a sort of permanent oath, when they are appointed, so they don’t have to swear in court. I did manage to affirm when I became a court-certified translator, although the courts seem fairly unfamiliar with that procedure here.

In an article on ProZ, Marta Stelmaszak, a Polish-to-English interpreter, also gives the affirmation.

The Interpreter’s Oath
“I swear by Allah/Almighty God, etc. that I will well and faithfully interpret and true explanation make of all such matters and things as shall be required of me according to my best of my skill and understanding”

The Interpreter’s Affirmation
“I do solemnly declare that I will well and faithfully interpret and true explanation make of all such matters and things as shall be required of me according to my best of my skill and understanding”

(That should be ‘the best’, not ‘my best’ – but ‘and true explanation make’ is apparently the recommended word order).

LATER NOTE: A commenter would have added the following affirmation as used in Oxford magistrates’ courts:

I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will well and faithfully interpret and true explanation make of all such matters and things as shall be required of me according to the best of my skill and understanding.

I imagine there is a lot of variation over the country, or should I say over England and Wales. Apparently Scots are permitted to raise a hand when swearing.

Disparaging the German Federal President/Verunglimpfung des Bundespräsidenten

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a kind of defamation you can commit in Germany called Verunglimpfung des Bundespräsidenten. The old StGB translation called it Disparagement of the Federal President, the new one (by Bohlander) calls it Defamation of the Federal President. It’s like defamation in that, in Germany, it’s a criminal offence that can only be prosecuted on the application of the person who claims to have been defamed. There’s a discussion with Udo Vetter here on the risks of going to prison for making a joke about Wulff.

There was in fact a case coming up in Dresden in which someone was on trial for making a joke about Wulff and his wife, but I don’t need to go into that now because this evening it seems the President has had the proceedings dropped (Wulff will keinen Prozess mehr).

See section 90 here:

It comes under the category of offences endangering the democratic state under the rule of law.

Section 90

Defamation of the President of the Federation

(1) Whosoever publicly defames the President of the Federation, in a meeting or through the dissemination of written material (section 11 (3)) shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years.

(2) In less serious cases the court in its discretion may mitigate the sentence (section 49 (2)) unless the conditions of section 188 are met.

(3) The penalty shall be imprisonment from six months to five years if the act constitutes an intentional defamation (section 187) or if the offender by the act intentionally supports efforts against the continued existence of the Federal

Republic of Germany or against its constitutional principles.

(4) The offence may only be prosecuted upon the authorisation of the President of the Federation.

Verunglimpfen is a nice word. Unglimpf means insult or defamation. Glimpflich is a better-known word. There was a MHG verb gilimpfan: to behoove. As in: it behooved him to drop the proceedings before he risked further ridicule.

First German court hearing in English/Erste Verhandlung auf Englisch (LG Bonn)

Posted on by
Reply

As reported in an earlier entry, hearings in English are now possible at three international commercial chambers in Aachen, Cologne and Bonn. Both parties have to agree to waive the use of an interpreter. The first such hearing took place on May 10 at the Bonn Regional Court (Landgericht). There is a brief report in German in the Kölnische Rundschau, but it does not go into detail, and indeed, the reporter was apparently unable to assess the effectiveness of the language:

Premiere in Bonn: “Good afternoon”, begrüßte Manfred Kaufmann, Vorsitzender der neu eingerichteten 19. Zivilkammer des Bonner Landgerichts, die Parteien: Dann erläuterte der Handelsrichter in englischer Sprache die juristische Problematik der vorliegenden Klage: Eine Aktiengesellschaft belgischen Rechts wirft darin einem Bonner Unternehmen Vertragsbruch vor. Worum es im Detail ging, blieb dem Prozessbeobachter – im Handelsenglisch nicht geübt – im Verborgenen.

However, a colleague, Martina Niessen, Diplom-Dolmetscherin, has kindly reported to translators’ mailing lists on the hearing, which she attended.

To summarize: the courtroom was rather small, seating scarcely more than twenty, but there were SAT1 TV cameras there and a reporter and photographer. The three judges’ wives were reportedly all native speakers of English. Both parties had German lawyers, and the plaintiff also had a Belgian lawyer.

None of the parties was a native speaker of English. The case related to a Belgian company which supplied the Cuban government with electronic components, and a German company which supplied such components to the Belgian company. The German company has been taken over by a U.S. corporation, and so problems have been created by the U.S. embargo against Cuba. The court wanted the parties to reach a compromise, in part because a large amount of Belgian documents in French and Cuban documents in Spanish would have needed to be translated (so much for simplifying matters by using English as the court language!).

There were some language problems. For example, it was necessary to spell names, and the judges were not used to spelling in English. The words plaintiff and defendant were confused several times. Our colleague had the impression that they would have liked to express themselves in German.

The two German lawyers called for a Grundurteil. This is a decision as to whether the plaintiff’s claim has merit, literally a ‘basic judgment’, a kind of interim judgment. I haven’t got my library with me, but I gather Dietl-Lorenz does not contain a term (German judges often consult this dictionary and if it makes a suggestion they are usually happy with it). Nobody knew what the English for Grundurteil was, so they used the term Grundurteil in German – probably the best thing they could do. I would have consulted my English translation of the Zivilprozessordnung for this blog entry, and indeed this is a reference the courts might consider having at hand, but none of these dictionaries or translations are authorities in themselves: the user needs to have the background knowledge to decide which, if any, suggested terminology works.

The record of the proceedings was dictated in German by the presiding judge. The Grundurteil is to be pronounced on 31 May. The hearing was 90 minutes long. One of the associate judges (Beisitzer) spoke excellent English, apparently.

The judges had a tendency to start complex sentences which they could not finish.

Other language problems: the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) was referred to as ‘he’.
Kritik was translated as critic, not criticism.
Gewinn was translated as gain, not profit.
Power of attorney had to be explained to the Belgian.

It does seem odd that – obviously – German law is always involved. It is difficult enough to talk about legal issues in a foreign language, but it is even harder to be constantly translating German law into a foreign language. And this is precisely what is not practised if you do an LL.M. in the USA or UK. It’s something you need to work on.

Pronouncing the English alphabet: I used to get students to write the letters in groups according to the vowel sound, like this (this presumes the British pronunciation of Z as zed – if it is pronounced zee, it goes in the second line instead:

A H J K
B C D E G P T V
F L M N S X Z
I Y
O
Q U W
R

Many thanks to Martina for this report. I’d love to attend one of these hearings!

Federal Court of Justice on translators’ fees/Bundesgerichtshof zu Erfolgshonoraren für Übersetzer

Posted on by
Reply

The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) has pronounced judgment in a case relating to a literary translator’s fee. It has sent the case back for retrial, so the decision in this specific case is outstanding, but in principle it supports the plaintiff.

The BGH press release in German is available at the court site and is reprinted in the Börsenblatt. In buchreport there was an article on the background.

The translator in question translated two novels from English into German in 2001 (the German Copyright Act was changed in 2002). She was paid the fifteen euros per page customary in the business at that time. She assigned all her rights of use to the publisher – in Germany, you can’t assign copyright, but you can assign the rights of use of the copyright, which boils down to the same thing here. She therefore did not share in the profits.

The court held that in principle the plaintiff can require the publisher agree to alter her contract. At the time it was entered into, it was customary for fifteen euros per page to be paid. But the intention of the Act was that a translator should have a reasonable share in the profits made on every business use of the translation (presumably this is wider than just print media), for at that time it could not be foreseen that for the period of copyright – until seventy years after the plaintiff’s death – there would be so little profit that fifteen euros a page was a reasonable payment.

German cat case/Deutscher Katzenfall in Times

Posted on by
Reply

Gary Slapper reports on two weird cases in The Times. One of them is a case recently decided by the Frankfurt am Main administrative court (Verwaltungsgericht).

The story begins with Peter Neumann’s cat and its expensive food tastes. The cat, Neumann argued, ate a €500 banknote. Holding some fragments of the note which he said had gone through the cat and been discovered in the litter tray, Neumann then went to the German Bundesbank to ask for a replacement note. … The bank declined to replace the note in this case.

The original German case report is here.

Soweit der Kläger geltend machen will, dass die drei von ihm eingereichten Banknotenteile zusammen mehr als 50 % einer 500,00 Euro-Banknote ergeben, hat das überzeugende Sachverständigengutachten ergeben, dass das Teilstück 2 nicht von der gleichen Banknote stammen kann wie die Teilstücke 1 und 3, sondern dass es sich mindestens um 2, evtl. sogar um 3 Ausgangsbanknoten handeln muss, von denen die fraglichen Teilstücke stammen. Aber auch die Teilstücke 1 und 3, die von derselben Originalnote stammen, ergeben – wie sich aus dem Sachverständigengutachten ergibt – keinen Flächenanteil von mindestens 50 % einer Banknote.

…
Wie die Beklagte zu Recht ausgeführt hat, ist es durchaus denkbar, dass die Katze – nachdem sie die Banknote zerfetzt hat – Teile der Banknote unbemerkt verschleppt hat und die Banknotenteile später aufgefunden werden oder aber wenn sie die Banknote tatsächlich gefressen hat – die Banknotenteile ausgeschieden hat und die Banknotenteile in den Exkrementen der Katze noch vorhanden waren und je nach Verbleib der Exkremente in diesen noch vorgefunden werden konnten bzw. können. Insoweit wäre es dem Kläger zuzumuten gewesen, die übrigen Banknotenteile in den Exkrementen der Katze sicherzustellen.

The name of the plaintiff is correctly not revealed in the German accounts.

Slapper seems to think the most curious other cat to have challenged the courts was Blackie the Talking Cat in Augusta, Georgia. He may not have heard of the other German case where a man received a fax in the night and jumped out of bed so fast that he frightened his cat, which fell off the scratching post and injured itself. Damages were not awarded.

Die zulässige Klage ist unbegründet, da dem Kläger keine Schadensersatzansprüche bezüglich der Verletzung seiner Katze zustehen. Als alleinige Anspruchsgrundlage kommt vorliegend § 823 BGB in Betracht. Der Kläger macht geltend, daß durch das zur Nachtzeit eingehende Faxschreiben der Beklagten sein Telefon geläutet habe, er aus dem Schlaf geschreckt und zum Telefon geeilt sei, wodurch die Katze vor Schreck vom Kratzbaum sprang und sich hierdurch verletzte.