German literary translators in the press/Die SZ und die Literaturübersetzer

Posted on 4 February 2007 by MMarks

An article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 2 February 2007 by Thomas Steinfeld, the editor of the arts pages, is no longer available except for subscribers: Ein Haus für Rechthaber.

It’s described in an article by Burkhard Kroeber on perlentaucher.de. Apparently Steinfeld says the huge decline in literary translations into German over the past year is directly attributable to the desire of literary translators for more money: they see their work only as a financial and bureaucratic reality and give no thought to ‘cultural dialogue’, its most important feature.

Further reactions by literary translators can be found on the website of the VdÜ, the professional association for literary translators.

(Via …is a blog)

Accessibility / Barrierefreiheit

Posted on 4 February 2007 by MMarks

Jeremy Keith of Adactio went to Berlin last December for the BIENE website accessibility awards and wondered about the German language, under the heading ‘The language of accessibility’:

… I was thinking about the German word being used to describe accessibility: Barrierefreiheit, literally free from obstacles. Its a good word, but because its describes websites by what they don’t contain (obstacles), it leads to a different way of thinking about the topic.
In English, it’s relatively easy to qualify the word accessible. We can talk about sites being quite accessible, fairly accessible, or very accessible. But if you define accessibility as a lack of obstacles, then as long as a single obstacle remains in place its hard to use the word barrierefrei as an adjective. The term is too binary; black or white; yes or no.

This also relates to the fact that creating an accessible website is not such a problem as keeping it accessible, and ensuring a client has an accessible website is not a question of expensive extras, but of fewer extras.

He was also a bit concerned that he might have offended jury members by calling them all du (I presume not).

(Transblawg is a not a barrier-free website)

LATER NOTE: Transblawg may well be more barrier-free since its move to Serendipity.

Carey Street

Posted on 2 February 2007 by MMarks

As I have run out of current trivia, here is a photo of a window in Carey Street in London, behind the Royal Courts of Justice and near the Seven Stars, and a close-up of part of the window (somewhat lightened).

LATER NOTE: This turned out to be the pub cat Tom Paine, of the Seven Stars.

Kinds of goods /Waren und Güter

Posted on 1 February 2007 by MMarks

Wikipedia has an entry headed Final good, which subsumes all kinds of things as goods. For example, the public good and private good are listed as types of goods.

I am in a quandary. I don’t feel like correcting the article, because it is about economics terms and not language. I also feel that people like the Language Log bloggers would see me as a prescriptivist.

But for me, the public good is an abstract, only ever used in the singular, and consumer goods always has an s on the end, and never the twain shall meet. That is, goods is an example of pluralia tantum – nouns that in a particular sense occur only in the plural.

However, there is also a technical meaning of good: a particular article that is produced in order to be sold. So it’s not part of everyday English, but it fits in that article. I’m still not happy with the heading – it’s not a disambiguation article, after all.

Claimant, plaintiff, pursuer / Kläger

Posted on 31 January 2007 by MMarks

Parties to civil proceedings in England:
Up to 1999: plaintiff and defendant
(divorce: petitioner and respondent)
A claimant included a person claiming some benefit, for instance unemployment benefit.

From 1999 (Civil Procedure Rules)
claimant and defendant
(divorce: petitioner and respondent)
A claimant for unemployment benefit etc. (as before)

In Scotland: pursuer and defender
(divorce: petitioner and respondent)
Benefit claimant as above

Most English websites mention ‘claimant (plaintiff)’ – after all, it’s only been seven years since the change. A Google search for claimant -plaintiff site:uk produces mainly references to benefit claimants.

Here’s an exception: the claimant user guide of Her Majesty’s Courts Service.

I have previously linked to Michael Quinion on this subject. He writes of legal Latin being ‘swept away’, which seems a bit sweeping, so to speak.

I mention this because I don’t often use the word claimant to translate Kläger(in). My translations don’t just go to England, either. Do people who translate for England and the rest of the UK use claimant? Do translators for the EU and the European Court of Justice? I think maybe only sometimes. And I remember in 2000 or 2001 asking a British publisher client whether I was now to use claimant, and getting the answer ‘When it’s appropriate’, which suggested to me that the problem hadn’t even filtered through.

Comparative Legal Linguistics / Buch

Posted on 30 January 2007 by MMarks

Professor Heikki E.S. Mattila of the University of Lapland has published a book on comparative legal linguistics that looks interesting and expensive. The amazon.com page lets you look inside and see the full table of contents and an extract. The publisher’s page is fairly long too, so I’ll quote from that here:

Contents
Foreword; Foreword to the Finnish original; Part 1 General Introduction: Legal language and legal linguistics; The concept of legal language; Genres of legal language; Legal linguistics as a discipline; The importance of legal-linguistic knowledge; Structure and content of this book. Part 2 Legal Language as a Language for Special Purposes: Functions of Legal Language: Importance of the theory of communication; Achieving justice; Transmission of legal messages; Strengthening the authority of the law; Strengthening lawyers’ team spirit; Linguistic policy; The cultural task of legal language. Part 3 Characteristics of Legal Language: Precision; Information (over)load; Universality and aloofness; Systemic character; Structure and formalism in legal texts; Frequency of initializations and acronyms; Sentence complexity and diversity of language elements; Archaism and solemnity; Proper use of legal language. Legal Terminology: Legal concepts; Characteristics of legal terminology; Formation of legal terminology. The Major Legal Languages: The Heritage of Legal Latin; The importance of Roman law; History of legal Latin; Latin in modern legal languages; The communication value of legal Latin; Dictionaries of legal Latin. Legal German: History of legal German; Characteristics of legal German; International importance of legal German. Legal French: History of legal French; Characteristics of legal French; International position today. Legal English: The common law system; Development of legal English; Characteristics of legal English; Legal English as a global language. Part 4 Conclusion:Lexical comprehension and research needs;changes in legal-linguistic dominance in the international arena; Terminological interaction between legal languages; Problems of lexical comprehension; The need for jurilinguistic research on legal institutions and concepts; Foreign terms and other expressions; Index.

(Via DORES, which has a new set of references out on publications on language and law)