I didn’t think I’d have occasion to mention law cases relating to antipodean underwear twice in one month, but here is the first and here the second:
The New South Wales Supreme Court, in Sydney, was told that Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the operatic soprano, pulled out of a series of concerts with John Farnham, the Dagenham-born crooner, after she watched him being bombarded with intimate items of clothing at one of his shows.
The Wall Street Journal law blog reported recently of a case where a student sued the University of Michigan Law School, alleging that its grading system discriminated against people with poor typing skills.
Adrian Yaroslaw Zachariasewycz probably spent ten minutes typing his own name. The complaint begins ‘The plaintiffs (hereinafter Adrian Zack and Maria Zack) …’
The plaintiffs, acting per se, claim that in certain exams it was widely known that a large amount had to be written in a short time, and allowance was not made for some students not being able to touch type.
Michigan Law School informed the WSJ blog that students can choose whether to write by hand or type.
(Via The Water Cooler at timesonline)
According to a dpa report I’ve only seen in English, at Expatica, a German lawyer is suing a German state, Bavaria I presume, for interfering with his constitutional right to enjoy nature:
Munich (dpa) – A lawyer has sued a German state on behalf of a dead bear, a spokesman for a tribunal in Munich said Friday, four months after Bruno the badly behaved bruin was shot.
The lawyer argues it was illegal to declare open season on Bruno, an Italian-born animal that was the first wild bear to roam Bavaria state for 170 years. Officials said it was likely to attack people.
…The lawyer, acting in his own name, is trying a different tack, suing at a tribunal that reviews administrative decisions and citing his constitutional right to enjoy the fruits of nature. The case could take several months to decide, the spokesman said in Munich.
I presume that by tribunal they mean an administrative court, the Verwaltungsgericht. Just because we don’t have administrative courts in England, I don’t see it as a reason to downgrade the German ones in translation!
By the way, Expatica has some interviews with people working in Germany: an English teacher, a journalist, and someone in the NGO sector.
In Deutschland gibt es beeidigte, oder vereidigte, oder ermächtigte Übersetzer, je nach Landesrecht. Kann man sagen, dass sie ihre Übersetzungen beglaubigen, oder bestätigen sie sie nur?
Ich bin vor einigen Jahren dieser Frage nachgegangen, indem ich viele Gesetze auf der Schönberger-CD-ROM durchsuchte und doch ein paar Beispiele fand, wo nicht nur Ämter, Rechtspfleger oder Notare beglaubigten, sondern sogar ein oder zweimal ein Übersetzer.
Ganz sicher bin ich immer noch nicht.
Auf jeden Fall erfuhr ich, dass die Richter in Berlin das Wort beglaubigen für Übersetzungen verbieten. Die Begründung war apart: weil ein paar Übersetzer unerlaubt Fotokopien beglaubigt hatten, sollten keine Übersetzer mehr irgendwas beglaubigen dürfen. Continue reading