This is one of those times of year when Germans say everything should be besinnlich (thoughtful, contemplative, peaceful). It goes right up to December 24. Some excitement is allowed on December 25 and 26, then comes the time zwischen den Jahren (between the years) when it all goes besinnlich again. On December 31, however, you can buy fireworks and terrify the neighbourhood – rockets shot horizontally from first-floor balconies are the worst. It occurs to me that the violence of Silvester may directly result from too much Besinnlichkeit beforehand.

I don’t usually experience the four Advent Sundays, where first one candle, then two, three and finally four are lit on the Advent wreath, but now I can. Yesterday I was queueing for a long time (is there any other) in the post office, to return a Philips radio alarm clock which doesn’t work with your iPod Touch if it’s in its case, when I was able to snaffle these four LED teawarmer lights, with a flickering effect. Price only 2.99 euros. I admit that my copy of Romain needs a bit of repair.

I am eventually mentioning this incident because it’s being reported erroneously as Pope Sued (BoingBoing, quoting Lowering the Bar. The latter says:

Sundermann’s client surely does not have standing to sue to enforce the seatbelt law, and even if he did the Papst would have diplomatic immunity as a head of state.

Well, yes, he probably does have diplomatic immunity, but this related to criminal offences and anzeigen is what we call in England laying an information or reporting someone to the police. And why would anyone not have standing (the US term, which I prefer to the English locus standi) to make a criminal complaint?

Lowering the Bar links to a German report in Der Westen and to an English report in the Irish Times, and even the latter has the facts right – it refers to a misdemeanour, a term also familiar in American criminal law.

Lawyer Johannes Christian Sundermann has filed papers in Dortmund on behalf of his unnamed client, charging the Pope with “repeated breaches” of Germany’s seat belt law.
“Herr Joseph Ratzinger, born 16 April 1927 in Marktl/Altötting” travelled on September 24th and 25th “for the duration of more than an hour” without a seat belt, the lawyer states in documents.
Mr Sundermann and his client say they can prove the repeated misdemeanour during his visit to Freiburg – using videos from YouTube.

I don’t think much of the Irish Times’ closing line:

In Germany, rules are rules.

One does love one’s national prejudices. But I think it is quite conceivable for something like this to happen in the UK, assuming (improbably) that a British cleric with highly conservative views became Pope and kept his British passport.

I had forgotten about these. I must have tried them and hated them when I was about ten. Some repeated BBC food programmes mentioned them and said they’re a British speciality. I think it’s only Opies who still make them. What is pickled is the immature walnut with all the surrounding flesh, outside the shell. I now find them very good with a pork pie. You have to like malt vinegar, though.

An internet search reveals many recipes to make your own, which should be OK if you have walnut trees. The commenters here are seeking a recipe for squirrel casserole with walnuts.

One possibility of ordering food from the UK is britishcornershop.co.uk. I seem to remember that during the ordering process, they tell you ‘you can still order 30 kilos more without increasing the postage’, so it’s OK for a group buy. They do have Matthew Walker individual (100 gram) Christmas puddings – similar to ones I bought at Waitrose as little presents. Mine have instructions ‘steam 30 minutes’ plus microwave time. They have Duchy ones too, but we don’t want to support people who charge twice as much and spend their time exercising unfair influence in politics.

Meanwhile, Fuchsia Dunlop can’t get used to the Japanese word tofu, as opposed to dou fu. I think beancurd is outdated, though. I didn’t realize tofu was Japanese, I thought it was Wade-Giles or something. But I think she is right.

I am being targeted by comment spammers at the moment so comments may cease to be possible for a while.

LATER NOTE: I completely forgot I once tasted Romanian green walnuts in honey. I found similar recipes for Greece and Armenia, and an Italian liqueur.

The Nürnberger Nachrichten reports that in comparison to Erlangen, Nuremberg and Fürth have a relatively poor educational record.

Graffiti, Veit-Stoß-Realschule, Nuremberg

The Volokh Conspiracy has a post on A Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States:

Gene Fidell (Yale Law School) and some of his students are putting together an article tentatively titled A Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States, which will basically help people know the standard ways of pronouncing Supreme Court case names (such as City of Boerne v. Flores and Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada). They have a list of cases to include, but if you have some suggestions, please post them in the comments. The requirements, of course, are that (1) it’s not obvious what the standard pronunciation is, and (2) the case comes up often enough to make it worth knowing the standard pronunciation.

Some amusing comments.

ERISA lawyers have always wondered how to pronounce Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U.S. 41 (1987). Cajun style (like “Geaux Tigers”) perhaps?

I’ve been told that Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB has been pronounced “Peek-A-Boo” in the field. Of course, the case is much easier as “Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.”

More discussion at languagehat, from whom I got the link.

Two news items are currently angering translators and interpreters, including myself.

1. The Bundestag committee hearing at which the majority of experts believe that German judges and lawyers who have done an LL.M. in an English-speaking country are well capable of conducting hearings on German law in English. The general opinion seemed to be that interpreters are not up to the job because they are not lawyers.

In an earlier post I discussed the problems in the first English-language hearing in Germany.

2. The decision of the Ministry of Justice in the UK to award court interpreting to one big translation company, regardless of quality. It appears that because interpreting using the professional system did not always work out well, the ministry decided that it needed to be ‘improved’. (But translation and interpreting will always run into problems – this isn’t a reason to give up trying to do things professionally). See petition.

It looks as if something similar is done in Ireland, where a judge criticized the quality of Lionbridge services.

Translation – I’ll concentrate on this to the exclusion of interpreting – is not a straightforward affair. On top of this, the customer is not usually in the position to assess the quality of the translation. A translator ought to have subject knowledge, training and experience. Of course, many translators don’t have all of those. Passing an exam is not perfect evidence.

In view of all this, it is surprising how many non-translators feel able to pass a verdict. Often, company bosses introduce supposedly cost-cutting software and procedures without consulting their in-house translators. Or they purport to know how fast a translation can be done or what translation company can do it, although they have no experience themselves. Users are widely unaware of the value of knowledge and experience. People who would not buy business equipment from their own trade without consulting seem to assume that anyone selling translation services knows what they are doing.

So what is translation? It is not simply a matter of knowing two languages. Subject-matter knowledge is necessary too. When I do a legal translation, I start off with a German text, often written by a German lawyer. I need to understand it, and that includes understanding if a non-standard term has been used – from my subject-matter knowledge I know what is meant. That means I can do further research more easily, because the non-standard term can’t be looked up: it is the standard term I will find. I know, however, when the law dictionaries are wrong or misleading – because bilingual dictionaries just remind you of what you already know: if they throw up a new term, it has to be researched. Bilingual specialist dictionaries are also notoriously unreliable. I also need to know when there is a mistake in the source text, which is quite common. It might be a contract where a bit has been omitted, it might be a judgment where the typist has not understood the dictation correctly.

I also need to know about language conventions – how things are expressed in English and in German, in various stylistic registers. About punctuation differences, hyphenation, whether to trust hyphenation software. These are all areas that may not be familiar to someone who speaks two languages but doesn’t work with texts.

It seems to me that those experts who think their year abroad makes them capable of handling oral and written legal English have already made their minds up. If an interpreter makes a mistake, this proves to them that only lawyers do not make mistakes: a conclusion that doesn’t follow the rules of logic. In fact, a legal interpreter or translator needs knowledge of both law and translation. Both can come in different forms, and both require training and practice.

My personal qualifications are: I am a Germanist who qualified as a solicitor in the UK and spent twenty years teaching DE>EN legal translation and other useful subjects in Germany (background studies and English grammar have proved particularly useful, so has teaching MultiTerm and word processing). I have no formal qualification in German law: I passed the Bavarian and Hesse exams for translators and the Hesse exam for interpreters, and there was a German law element in the Bavarian exam. I also attended classes given by German public prosecutors and judges, but I learnt most from all the research I had to do to actually teach legal translation. There are many roads to translation, and you will find lawyers saying a translator has to be a lawyer, or that you need to be qualified as a lawyer in source and target jurisdictions, and translators saying they have done the law courses required in Hamburg or North-Rhine Westphalia, or court terminology in Bavaria, or that you have to do a translatation degree or postgraduate course. Personally I don’t think there are any specific qualifications that prove ability.