Anna Steegmann teaches writing in New York. She has an article in the New York Times about being an illegal German immigrant in New York, scarcely able to speak English.

It was a Saturday afternoon, a time when German cities turn into graveyards. But in the park, blasting radios battled one another for dominance, elderly men played speed chess with youthful contenders, and dope peddlers, fire eaters and aspiring folk singers competed for the public’s attention. Children on the swings shrieked with delight, while hyperactive small dogs engaged in rough-and-tumble play.
I was 25, love-struck and delusional, and I decided to stay. Ignoring all the illegal immigrant’s red flags (no health insurance, no green card, no work, no savings), I cashed in my return ticket.

Those Saturday afternoons are not as bad as they used to be. They are a bit like that, but the feeling of deep depression and everything dead has gone. Some shops here stay open till 8 p.m. It’s not New York, though.

(Via The Lexicographer’s Rules)

Here’s an aspect of the Madeleine McCann story that hasn’t received a detailed airing and sounds less fishy than the rest of it. We read of two specially trained sniffer dogs from Britain who were flown into Portugal. Elsewhere they are described as the only two dogs in the world who can detect that a corpse has been in a room.

In unseren Versuchen konnten Leichenhunde sogar noch nach einem Jahr einen Blutstropfen aufspüren. Auch, wenn die Stelle sorgfältig gereinigt wurde, riechen die Hunde das Blut. Dabei ist die benötigte Menge minimal, oft sehen wir mit freiem Auge beim besten Willen keinerlei Spuren, die Hunde melden aber trotzdem einen Fund.

(Interview on sniffer dogs, SZ)

Die Zeitung „Correio da Manh㓠ging am Freitag am weitesten mit der Meldung, dass die vor einem Monat aus England an die Algarve gebrachten Spürhunde „Leichengeruch“ an der Kleidung der Mutter und dem Stofftier Madeleines, das die Mutter häufig mitführt, entdeckt hätten.

(FAZ)

As far as I can tell, the two famous dogs are Eddie (a springer spaniel) and Frankie (a border collie), of South Yorkshire police. They are called victim recovery dogs (Leichenhunde; I suppose victim means a dead person). However, the two dogs who went to Portugal were Eddie and Keela (another springer spaniel). This accords with the reports that one dog was trained to sniff corpses and one trained to sniff minute amounts of blood.

Here is a picture of Frankie – who did not go to Portugal – looking as keen as me at the beginning of a hard day’s translating:

I was disappointed by the information on Dog News, where the only story dates from May.

There is a photo of Eddie and some more background on this Cork fm radio site. Here is Keela from the South Yorkshire police Dog Diary site, which has Keela’s diary for children:

I spoke too soon when I said green had been displaced by bronze in the pedestrian zone.

Since the redesign, virtually all facilities for dogs have disappeared.

CD. Reinhören (amazon.de did not work for me)

From my email:

DORES enthält neue Einträge
******************************
DORES, unsere Dokumentation zu Recht und Sprache unter http://www.dores.admin.ch enthält ab sofort (7. September 2007) neue Einträge. Zudem stellt sich DORES seit Sommer 2006 im neuen, vereinheitlichten Kleid des Internetauftritts der schweizerischen Bundesverwaltung dar. Ein Besuch von Ihnen würde uns freuen, aber auch jede Anregung, jede Kritik.

Some online goodies were revealed here (not yet read): Brigitte Zypries, the German Minister of Justice, gave a speech on legal German at a symposium on language and law in Berlin in November 2006:

Zypries, Brigitte: Juristendeutsch: Handwerkszeug oder Herrschaftsmittel? In: Der Sprachdienst 1 / 2007, 2-8.
Die deutsche Bundesmnisterin der Justiz hielt diesen Vortrag am Symposion “Sprache und Recht” im November 2006 in Berlin. Sie kündigt darin unter anderem ein Projekt zur stärkeren redaktionellen Begleitung von Gesetzgebungsprojekten in der Bundesgesetzgebung in Deutschland an.

This can be found online too.

There’s a link to an article on English as the Language of Law in Switzerland.

Vogt, Nedim Peter / Drolshammer, Jens: English as the Language of Law and the 2005 Swiss Law Bibliography. In: LeGes – Gesetzgebung & Evaluation 2 / 2007, 229-237.
Link: http://www.leges.ch

And there’s a book by Hannes Kniffka (to be published shortly) I would be interested in:

Kniffka, Hannes: Working in Language and Law. A German Perspective. Basingstoke (UK) / New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2007, 304 S.

Stu’s Views – Law & Legal Cartoons really is very funny. There are cartoons on all kinds of legal topics.