Piggy Bankrupt blogs about how he became bankrupt and how you can survive bankruptcy. You can even ask him questions, although he may not be thinking of the questions of EN>DE translators.

Bankruptcy happened to me in early 2006 and in an effort to share my experience I’ve since decided to write this blog. You will read what I experienced throughout the bankruptcy process and how credit cards, student loans and a business landed me with almost half a million pounds of debt.

LATER NOTE:

Piggy does not give bankruptcy advice and suggests you seek professional advice if considering bankruptcy.

(via Delia Venables)

On June 7th, the South China Morning Post had an article by Polly Hui headed Chief justice laments rise of greedy lawyers and beginning ‘Mercenary considerations had assumed greater prominence than ethical standards in the legal profession, the chief justice said yesterday….’ The rest is not available without registration, so I quote Roll On Friday:

Mr Justice Li cited the case of a client who asked his lawyer for a breakdown of his bill. The itemised account included a charge for “recognising you in the street and crossing the busy road to talk to you to discuss your affairs, and recrossing the road after discovering it was not you”.

I suspect Mr Li was using an old chestnut to illustrate the ridiculous details in invoices. But I suppose you never know.

LATER NOTE: Yes, this does seem apocryphal: I have now found the same story was told by Mr Li at LAWASIA in 2003.

The story is told of the lawyer who rendered a bill to a client which contained a charge for an item which read “To recognizing you in the street and crossing the busy road to talk to you to discuss your affairs and recrossing the road after discovering it was not you”.

I had forgotten all those solicitors’ invoices using ‘to’ instead of ‘for’.

Alan Johnson, who runs a tighter geological ship on Geotransblog than I do a legal one here, reported not there but on the pt group at Yahoo on an article in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung.

Die 48-Jährige spricht drei Sprachen und hatte sich für die Besucherregistrierung der Hannover Messe beworben: „Zu alt“, hieß es. Nun fordert sie 19 000 Euro Schadensersatz.

This is the case of a university graduate translator, Martina Schaefer, who was rejected for the Hannover Trade Fair (English site) because she is 48.

She wanted 9.05 euros an hour as an interpreter, not 7.78 euros an hour outside the turnstiles. Her complaint was accepted as far as the pay and job was concerned, but the 19,000 euro damages claim is going to court.

Für die Anwältin Sabine Kiemstedt ist dies ein klarer Fall von Altersdiskriminierung und damit ein Verstoß gegen das Allgemeine Gleichbehandlungsgesetz. Sie fordert für ihre Mandantin als immateriellen Schadensersatz knapp 19 000 Euro. „Diese Summe hat auch eine Genugtuungsfunktion, schließlich ist es doch eine Art Schmähung, wenn einem so einfach ins Gesicht gesagt wird ,Du bist mit 48 zu alt für den Job vor der Schranke‘“, sagt Kiemstedt.

It is traditional for the Erlangen translation students to get jobs like this at the Nuremberg Toy Fair – I don’t know what they’re paid, but they are glad of the practice. They are glorified stall assistants and are sometimes expected to spend the evening with British clients who believe the point of going to the Continent is to get drunk. But I quite agree that it is ageist to turn down a 48-year-old woman if she wants the 9.05 euros.

More G8-related translation problems: today’s Independent has an article by Tony Paterson about the wives of the heads of state together with a lone man, Professor Joachim Sauer, Angela Merkel’s husband.

He is further handicapped by a surname which literally means “sour” and has fuelled rumours that he is a humourless academic. Although the German media described him, somewhat bafflingly yesterday, as a “cock in a basket”, Professor Sauer was clearly doing his best to entertain the G8 wives. Wearing a casual shirt, he kissed his guests on both cheeks in a gesture that brought the warm appreciation of Cherie Blair. For the record, the only ones to copy Professor Sauer’s look and wear trousers were Laura Bush and Ake Abe, the Japanese leader’s wife.

As Pat says on the ITI GerNet mailing list, is the Independent really incapable of recognizing and translating an idiom? But of course, that’s the thing about foreign – it is baffling, isn’t it? And I haven’t heard too much criticism of Professor Sauer or any comment on his not uncommon name.

This does rather take us back to the World Cup WAGs, who have apparently entered the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary.

(Hahn im Korb is translated by Muret-Sanders and Collins as cock of the walk, although Collins does add ‘Mann unter Frauen’ – I think the two expressions have drifted slightly apart).

I admit the expression used to make me wonder in the 1960s, when one of the highlights of the ENO performance of the Ring was chicken in a basket in the interval, which I think was deep-fried chicken and chips.

Unter der Überschrift Einblick in US-Beweisrecht empfiehlt German American Law Journal Blog eine kurze Einführung ins amerikanische Beweisrecht von Lothar Lieske.

Das amerikanische Beweisrecht, immerhin ein Sechstel der amerikanischen Anwaltsprüfung, ist von erheblicher Bedeutung für den Ausgang eines Prozesses und unabhängig von der einzelstaatlichen Ausgestaltung äußerst kompliziert. Grundlegend unterscheidet es zwischen Zeugen (auch Sachverständige), Urkunden und Dokumenten, sogenannten echten Beweismitteln und zu Demonstrationszwecken herangezogenen Beweismitteln. Als primäres Beweismittel gilt die Zeugenaussage, auf deren Grundlage für gewöhnlich alle weiteren Beweismittel eingeführt werden.

At German-American Law Journal Blog, Lothar Lieske gives an introduction in German to the tip of the iceberg of the U.S. law of evidence.

English-to-German legal translators might well take note of this: long transcripts of trials are prepared in the USA, sometimes have to be translated and then often give rise to enquiries on mailing lists, I have noticed. You don’t have to know the whole law of evidence in advance, but a few basic points could save a lot of time researching a knotty problem.

For more information, Thomas A. Mauet, Trial Techniques is a wonderfully readable book on trial advocacy, full of examples (that was a tip from Professor Sharon Byrd a couple of years ago). You can look inside the book here. It has the Federal Rules of Evidence in the back, but they can also be found online.

Spiegel Online reports on the German engineer Jürgen Perthold, who is living in Anderson, South Carolina, and has created a small camera to hang round his cat’s neck so he can follow where the cat has been. Mr. Lee CatCam