Sign of the times:

This illustrates what I am sometimes afraid of:

At Edeka. I wonder what sex the children were?

The translations into English of French and German decisions and statutes that were on the website of the Institute of Global Law at University College London are now at the Institute for Transnational Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Presumably Professor Basil Markesinis has moved there too.

I see that department also has Inge Markovits, who was one of the few people to write about the East German justice system at the time of reunification.

A comment by Cheryl Stephens (Plain Language Wizardry) under the last entry recommends a multilingual legal glossary at Vancouver Community College.

Unfortunately this has no German. It offers plain-language definitions of 5000 terms in Canadian law, translated into Chinese (traditional or simplified characters), Farsi, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

The project looks interesting, but it’s really designed for non-lawyers, including unaccredited court interpreters, in Canada. A translator would want a more complex definition, and a trained or experienced court interpreter would not need the help.

The glossary is an attempt to respond to an issue identified by the Law Courts Education Society of B.C. (LCES) and the Vancouver Community College Certificate Program in Court Interpreting (VCC) – that of a lack of consistency in the comprehension and use of legal terminology among unaccredited court interpreters working in the courts of British Columbia. This issue is particularly significant in areas outside the Lower Mainland, where accredited interpreters are virtually non-existent.

The limitations of the glossary are set out in detail: for example, it does not relate to the legal systems of the countries where the various languages are spoken.

The most interesting plain language resources for translators are ones that (reliably) explain and discuss legalese.

Isabella Massardo at Taccuino di traduzione has unearthed the Party of the First Part website and weblog, by Alan Freedman.
The sites are advertising a book of the same name that has not yet been published. Unfortunately, William Safire has given his approval.

What does it mean?
Witnesseth? Aforesaid? Quash that subpoena ab initio? Ask POFP for a translation of your favorite drivel and/or check out our A – Z glossary of legal terms already defined by our panel of distinguished experts.

In addition to the glossary, there is a competition for the Golden Gobbledygook Award for bad legalese and a Hall of Shame.

I think the earlier entries – a few a year from 2002 on – were originally syndicated in newspapers.

Time will tell how useful this blog is, but it certainly has a lot of useful legal English in it.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog invited some lawyer-authors who went to law school to give advice to One Ls (several entries dated August 31).

Ron Liebman, Saira Rao, Jeffrey Toobin, Cameron Stracher, Jeremy Blachman, and Scott Turow. There is a description of their own writings for each of them.