Deutsche Sprachwelt reports that the German Wikipedia is in the process of purging a large number of articles, mainly on associations for the preservation of standards in the German language:

Bereits gelöscht sind Lexikonartikel über den „Tag der deutschen Sprache“, die „Theo-Münch-Stiftung der Deutschen Sprache“ oder die „Liste der Druckmedien in alter Rechtschreibung“. In einem Löschverfahren – der Vorstufe zur Löschung – befinden sich gegenwärtig zum Beispiel Artikel über die „Stiftung Deutsche Sprache“, die „Henning-Kaufmann-Stiftung zur Pflege der Reinheit der deutschen Sprache“, den „Verein für deutsche Rechtschreibung und Sprachpflege“, das „Netzwerk Deutsche Sprache“, den „Deutschen Sprachrat“, den Verein „Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung“ oder den „Redaktionsstab der Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache e.V. beim Deutschen Bundestag“. Auch der Eintrag über den „Verein für Sprachpflege“, der die DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT herausgibt, ist betroffen. Daneben sind zahlreiche Artikel zur Plansprache Esperanto von der Löschung bedroht.

Who says Germans don’t like forming associations?

Via OnzeTaal

Delia Venables’ Internet Newsletter for Lawyers has a new look and is now produced jointly with Nick Holmes of infolaw.
It costs money, so many readers will say there is enough to read out there. However, it’s always excellent and now it has the advantage that a glimpse of the contents can be seen by non-lawyers.

An article on Web 2.0 mentioned The Legal Scholarship Network, actually part of the Social Science Research Network (that is, there is not just law there, but several subject areas).

The Legal Scholarship Network, a joint project hosted by Stanford Law School and the European Corporate Governance Institute, provides an open facility to upload and catalogue legal research and position papers on legislation and other issues. Currently the site holds more than 75,000 papers. There have been almost 10 million downloads to date. Clearly there is a demand for collaborative expertise and perhaps this is how Web 2.0 may be used by lawyers.

I downloaded a couple of papers, including Hill, Claire A. and King, Christopher, “How Do German Contracts Do As Much With Fewer Words?” . Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 79, p. 889, 2004 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=596668.

This paper presents quite a positive view of German contracts in contrast with American, and to some extent also English, contracts:

Contrast these two standard forms of a forum selection clause:
• American Clause: The exclusive forum for the resolution of any dispute under or arising out of this agreement shall be the courts of general jurisdiction of ___ and both parties submit to the jurisdiction of such courts. The parties waive all objections to such forum based on forum non conveniens.
• German Clause: Ausschließlicher Gerichtsstand ist ___.
Contrast these two boilerplate phrases:
• American clause: including but not limited to.
• German Clause: insbesondere.
Contrast these two clauses on scope of agency:
• English Clause: The [Agent] agrees that the [Principal] shall at its sole discretion be able to accept or reject any order obtained by the [Agent] for any reason including poor credit rating of the client, bad payment record,
unavailability of materials or textiles, [and] conflict of interest with existing clients. The [Agent] shall not be entitled to receive any payment for any order so rejected.
• German Clause: Es steht dem Unternehmer frei, ein vom Handelsvertreter vermitteltes Geschäft anzuschließen oder abzulehnen.

38 pages of discussion of differences and their sources and effects. Some of what a search on ‘German law’ threw up.

Four UK blogs on family law now (I think Nick Holmes pointed this out recently). Jacquig is a family law barrister who tries to explain things to laypersons, with an emphasis on practical advice, and also has a wiki including a JargonBuster.

SpainWilliams llp is a small law firm’s website done entirely on Typepad. This might interest some translators as a method of creating a website from blogging software. The blog is Family Law Matters. Here’s an entry on how to dissolve a civil partnership (Lebenspartnerschaft): just like divorce apart from adultery.

Meanwhile, Boing Boing links to advice for divorcing men in New Zealand who want to keep their Meccano. Some of the advice is familiar and could be useful even outside the field of Meccano:

Claim everything of the spouse’s as a bargaining chip even if you don’t want it including half of the shoes (the left foot ones J ).

This reminds me of when my family were looking at houses in England thirty years ago and one belonged to a couple going through divorce. It had a whole room full of working Meccano, but the wife didn’t seem interested in talking about it.

This Russian t-shirt enables you to communicate by pointing at the symbols if you are in a country where you don’t speak the language.

It may be better for men. I have a feeling that if I wore one and pointed at some of the icons, the message might be ambiguous.

(Via Vivendo e Traduzindo)

An article by Stefan Klein in the FAZ yesterday, headed Dümmer auf Englisch, discusses the death of German as a language of science. He mentions a conference where six of the speakers were Germans, three Americans and one British:

Und alle sprachen Englisch oder, im Fall der deutschen Redner, mitunter auch so etwas Ähnliches. Seltsam gewählte Worte und verschlungene Sätze ließen so manchen Vortrag weniger brillant wirken, als er inhaltlich war.

Klein also mentions that of 1976 master’s courses at German universities, 250 have English as the sole language. There’s also some discussion of terms that are preciser and more easily comprehensible in scientific German than in English.

Wer Wissenschaft nur in einer Fremdsprache begegnet, bezahlt selbst dann mit Verlusten, wenn er dieses Idiom hervorragend beherrscht. „We are dumber in English“, zu diesem Schluss kamen Untersuchungen in Schweden und den Niederlanden, wo Kinder von ihrem ersten Schultag an mit dem Englischen vertraut gemacht werden. Vorlesungen auf Englisch sind dort Teil jedes Studiums, doch die Prüfungsergebnisse fallen im Schnitt zehn Prozent schlechter aus als bei Lehrveranstaltungen in der Muttersprache. In englischen Seminaren stellen und beantworten die Studenten weniger Fragen, sie wirken insgesamt hilfloser. Weder Studenten noch Lehrern ist das Problem gewöhnlich bewusst, weil alle ihre Gewandtheit im Englischen überschätzen.

(In the comments, a retired engineer says that Tragflächen is the right word for the wings of an aeroplane – wings makes him think of duck wings (large meaty ducks?) and gives him an appetite. To say nothing of the ‘medieval’ system of inches, feet and yards).

This could also be the death of English as a language of any depth.

Journal d’un avocat reports on the decision of the employment court after petite anglaise lost her job at the accountancy firm Dixon Wilson for blogging. The text of the decision has now been published (Dixon Wilson may yet appeal). The advocat discusses the translation into French of the word twunt>:

‘Lorsque ça se passait mal en début d’année j’ai failli créer un blog parallèle secret nommé mon patron est un enculé [a twunt] pour me défouler. Je raconterai ces histoires un jour, quand je ne travaillerai plus pour lui … »

Je précise que la traduction de twunt par “enculé” a été proposée par le Cabinet DIXON WILSON. On ne saurait les blâmer : ce sont des comptables, pas des littéraires. Mais ils restent débiteurs de la vérité.
Twunt est un néologisme argotique, composé d’un mélange de deux mots grossiers, twat et cunt, qui désignent tous deux l’organe sexuel féminin. Dès lors, le traduire par “enculé” démontre une méconnaissance de l’anglais, de l’anatomie, et de la grammaire, car ils traduisent un génitif par un participe passé.
Cry in shame, o Britannia, for thy sons have turned into illiterates.