Introduction to English law for translators and/or non-lawyers

Starting again: I started this series on 22 October 2008 and wrote 5 posts, which you can find via the IEL tag. The last post was on 8 March 2009 and was a bit messy.

By request I am starting again, so here’s a summary of the story so far.

Summary so far:
1. Introduction
A revised version of my old Erlangen teaching notes

2. Great Britain and Ireland: geographical and political terms
Terms: Great Britain, the British Isles, Ireland, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland

3. The United Kingdom and its three legal systems
Three jurisdictions: English law in England and Wales, Northern Ireland law in Northern Ireland (similar), Scottish law in Scotland (rather different).

4. English law
Started in 1066 (but no clean break) and later history, export of the system

5. History of English law
The courts, contract and tort (forms of action), real and personal actions, common law and equity

Terms touched on so far:
jurisdiction, Jurisdiktion, Gerichtsbezirk, Zuständigkeit
Rechtsprechung
executive, legislature, judiciary
a remedy

I am going to start again with a new post on equity and one on the common law. These are terms that cause translators a lot of grief, and I think the beginning of my treatment was very messy.

Let me repeat that this is a simplified, indeed over-simplified, summary that is intended to help people new to the subject orientate themselves in law and legal terminology. It has a tendency to generalize and could easily be criticized for that reason, but adding more detail would probably not serve its purpose.

One criticism I’ve received is recommending Wikipedia articles. I only recommend articles that I find helpful and reliable, and the fact that Wikipedia may contain errors somewhere or other does not alter the fact that some of its articles are ideal for this purpose. If you would prefer a book, one that I would recommend and that can be got second-hand is Dieter Henrich, Einführung in das englische Privatrecht – it’s in German, of course. It appeared in 1971 (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt) and there was a later edition published elsewhere, and even a 2003 edition, but as it presents simple accounts of English law in history, it is not out of date.

The Bavarian transport minister, Peter Ramsauer, has long since banned a lot of English words from the German language in his ministry. Here’s an interview in German, which appeared in Stern in February 2010.

This story was widely reported once again yesterday, in the UK press as well as the German. The Independent reports today (‘Denglish’ now verboten):

His aim, which was backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, was to defend his language against the spread of “Denglish” – the corruption of German with words such as “handy” for mobile phone and other expressions including “babysitten” and “downloaden”. As a result, words such as “laptop”, “ticket” and “meeting” are verboten in Mr Ramsauer’s ministry. Instead, staff must use their German equivalents: “Klapprechner”, “Fahrschein” and “Besprechung” as well as many other common English words that the minister has translated back into German.

He may have been diverting attention from the effects of snow on German rail and road transport:

Mr Ramsauer took time off from his role as minister in charge of sorting out some of the worst winter traffic chaos in decades yesterday to announce that his campaign to save German had been a roaring success. He said many Germans felt excluded by the growing use of “Denglish”.

Here is part of a list of Ramsauer corrections from the Rhein-Zeitung.

Administration – Verwaltung
Advisory Board – Beirat
Annex – Anhang
Backup – Sicherung, Absicherung
Beamer – Datenprojektor
Benchmark – Orientierungswert, Vergleichsmaßstab
Berechnungs-Tools – Berechnungsmethoden
Best Practice – bewährte Verfahren/Praktiken, Musterlösungen
Brainstorming – Ideensammlung
Briefing – Vorbesprechung
business cluster – Branchenkonzentration – Branchenschwerpunkt
Business Improvement District – Kooperationsregion von Geschäftsleuten
CarSharing – Gemeinschaftsauto
Checkliste – Prüfliste
cluster – regionales Netzwerk – Konzentrationspunkt
Computer – Rechner
Contracting – Vergabe
Controlling – Aufsicht, Steuerung
Controlling – Kontrolle, Steuerung
Corporate Design – einheitliches Auftreten, einheitliche Außendarstellung
Corporate Design – einheitliches Erscheinungsbild
Deadline – Abgabetermin, Frist
Debriefing – Nachbesprechung
Design-to-cost – Entwurf innerhalb einer festen Kostengrenze
Download – Herunterladen
Dummy – Attrappe (passt nicht immer)
e-government elektronische Behördendienste
E-Mail -(elektronische) Nachricht
Energie-Contracting – gewerbliche Wärmelieferung
Energiespar-Contracting –
Vertragl. garant. E.-Einsparung durch Externen
European Electronic Toll Service – Europäischer Elektronischer Mautdienst

One can see some of these are difficult. The equivalent to corporate design just doesn’t have the conciseness to make it popular. Then there are words like Handy (not on the list) that seem to be German inventions. One term new to me is Gigaliner (for a juggernaut). I can’t find many ghits on UK sites. Here it says the term was invented by a company for the 2004 International Motor Show:

Der Begriff “Gigaliner” ist eine Erfindung der Krone – Fahrzeugwerke zur IAA 2004 und bezeichnet Megatrailer mit angehängtem Volumen-Tandemachsanhänger.

Taking the underground to Nuremberg airport (I had to rebook to England three times), I was surprised to hear the voice saying ‘Next train to Airport’ – that is, the tube station Flughafen is translated into English. At the station itself, both versions appear on the wall.

Now here is the Hamburg Railway system with all the station names in English:

HVV Railway System Map

(via Christiane Bergfeld’s weblog Übersetzen und Literatur, doch nicht nur)

I remember when I studied German in London that we translated some of the London underground names into German. A fuller version is available at Vienna University:

London Underground map in German

Heathrow comes out as Heidenreihe, Hounslow as Hundslangsam and Ealing Common as Gemeinsames Aalen.

By Horst Prillinger

On the Omniglot blog, today’s problem is how to translate:

Recht haben und Recht bekommen sind zwei verschiedene Dinge (ist/sind zweierlei)

It means: Being in the right and getting justice are two different things.

It isn’t very easy to translate it elegantly. Lukas seems to be doing best so far (5 entries at time of posting).

I am thinking of The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. I can’t swear it was recommended to me, but I remember a friend who lived in Japan mentioning it. I have read it at least twice and could imagine reading it again. I might not have found it if it hadn’t been mentioned.

I am now in the UK, after Lufthansa eventually booked me onto Air Berlin. A young woman architect disappeared in Bristol on December 17th and it sounds as if her body has now been found. She had been out with colleagues, then bought a pizza at Tesco on the way home, but no trace of the pizza was found and her keys and purse were inside her flat, her boyfriend found when he arrived back from a weekend visiting his family.

In Wortfeld, Alexander Svensson compares the website of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary with that of the Lower Saxony police.

Zunächst einmal gibt es dafür eine Webadresse, die zwar immer noch zu lang ist, aber vielleicht gerade noch auf Fernsehbildschirme passt: http://avonandsomerset.police.uk/jo ist ein Redirect zur eigentlichen Seite. Dort gibt es (1) eine Karte mit den Orten, an denen sich die Vermisste zuletzt aufgehalten hat, (2) ein Video mit einem Appell der Eltern, (3) einen Kasten mit Twitter-Einträgen zum Stichwort #helpfindjo, (4) Meldungen und Fotos — die Bilder enthalten alle die URL der Website — sowie (5) Social-Bookmarking-Buttons. Dazu gibt es ein Online-Kontaktformular für Hinweise.

There’s a URL for this search, redirecting to the police site, with a map, a video showing her parents appealing for information, tweets, reports and photos, and also social bookmarking buttons.