Die Guardian berichtet, dass der Lord Chief Justice (Lordoberrichter) mit Strafgefangenen einen Tag lang gemeinnützige Arbeit geleistet hat, die statt einer Gefängnisstrafe verhängt wird oder eine Strafe verkürzt. Er wollte beweisen, dass auch Strafen, die keine Freiheitsstrafen sind (non-custodial sentences) funktionieren. Die Presse war nicht informiert.

‘My cover had been arranged,’ he said. ‘I posed as a shipping solicitor convicted of driving with excess alcohol and sentenced to 150 hours’ unpaid work and 18 months’ disqualification.’

Er musste u.a. eine heruntergekommene Unterführung saubermachen.

The most senior judge in England and Wales – told to wear a yellow fluorescent jacket for safety reasons – was driven to the Lakes in Bletchley, a run-down council estate where vandalism and antisocial behaviour are rife. He and his three workmates were ordered to scrape the moss from two filthy seating areas and clean them up before repainting a burnt-out underpass daubed in graffiti and clearing surrounding weeds.
Though the 68-year-old Phillips swims in icy outdoor pools all winter and treks in the Himalayas, he found the work demanding.

Vielleicht sollte man sich einfach vorstellen, man wäre in der Himalaya?

Some passers-by who saw the men’s ‘Community Payback’ sandwich board shouted at the Lord Chief Justice that his efforts were useless. ‘They asked why we were bothering to clean the place up when it would be just the same tomorrow.’ Others were encouraging, including a gang of small boys who demanded to know what crimes the men had committed. ‘Until then there hadn’t been a lot of chitchat or eye contact, but the offenders readily admitted what they had done,’ Phillips said. ‘I thought it was a very good lesson for these boys.’
He was allowed a short lunch break in which he ate a cheese and tomato roll prepared by his wife and read The Sea, by John Banville. His three workmates shared a copy of the Sun.

LATER NOTE: the Consilio Charon blog has the story, and a picture too (without the jacket, of course). (Thanks to Lorraine for that tip).

Kann jemand das definieren oder einen Hinweis geben?

What is a gesellschaftender Geschäftsführer? Is it the GmbH equivalent of a geschäftsführender Gesellschafter in an OHG? Whence the verb gesellschaften?

My money is on owner-director, or maybe shareholder and director (shareholder in a GmbH is a bit translatorese but very common) but of course one likes to understand things before translating them (this isn’t my translation, fortunately, but a query from another translator).

I read that a director can but need not be a member of a GmbH, but that is a weird adjective. Has it been communicated to the German language watchdogs?

LATER NOTE: The colleague’s client replied to the question, ‘Zum Thema gesellschaft. Geschäftsführer oder geschäftsführender Gesellschafter muss ich mich leider geschlagen geben. Meiner Meinung nach gibt es nur letzteren Begriff. Doch …. besteht auf Nutzung des ersten.’

Strafprozesse und andere Ungereimtheiten reports that the cat of nine tails was reintroduced in the Bahamas some years ago and is to be used (it’s only for ‘egregious’ cases).

Zu 16 Jahren Gefängnis ist Altulus Newbold auf den Bahamas verurteilt worden. Er hat versucht, eine 83-jährige Frau zu vergewaltigen. Dem Richter waren die 16 Jahre nicht genug: Er verurteilte den 34-Jährigen zusätzlich zu acht Schlägen mit der neunschwänzigen Katze, einem Folterinstrument aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Newbold brach in das Haus seines 83-jährigen Opfers ein und versuchte es zu vergewaltigen. Die Frau wehrte sich jedoch erfolgreich – es gelang ihr, die Genitalien des Täters mit einem Schlag zu verletzen.

The source was KronenZeitung, where there is a picture. English account here.

Altulus Newbold is a name with a ring to it.

Wikipedia says nine tails is not the only number met, but a thick rope consists of three three-strand thin ropes, so nine is a likely number. It also informs on terms like the captain’s daughter, reduced cat, and boy’s pussy (I don’t think this one would work in AmE). It also explains the expressions not enough room to swing a cat and letting the cat out of the bag.

The still-popular sailor’s song What do you do with a Drunken Sailor? has a verse that goes “Give him a taste of the captain’s daughter” or “Throw him in bed with the captain’s daughter”. While this doesn’t sound like a dire fate for the tipsy seaman, the term “captain’s daughter” referred in naval jargon to the cat o’ nine tails or a similar whip.

It was reinstated in the Bahamas in 1991, in Antigua and Barbuda in 1990, in Barbados in 1993, in Trinidad in 1993 and in Jamaica in 1994.

Comments are open again.

I resorted the MT Blacklist entries in order of date of entry and deleted the latest ones.

This is a DE>ENhere:

IAB-Glossar Englisch : [Begriffe und ihre Verwendung rund um den Arbeitsmarkt Englisch-Deutsch, Deutsch-Englisch]
Sonst. Personen: Heinz Werner ; Ingeborg König ; Roger Bennett *1948-*
Körperschaft: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nürnberg
Ausgabe: 6., vollst. überarb. und erw. Aufl.
Erschienen: Nürnberg : Inst. für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung der Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2004
Umfang: 1277 S.
Anmerkung: 5. Aufl. u. d. T.: Werner, Heinz: Glossar zur Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung : Glossar Englisch-Deutsch / Deutsch-Englisch ; Begriffe zu Arbeitsmarkt, Bildung und Sozialem
ISBN: 3-00-014822-1
Schlagwörter: Arbeitsmarkt / Berufsforschung / Wirtschaftssprachwörterbuch / Englisch / Deutsch

I used to have a paperback copy of an earlier edition, but I lent it to someone and didn’t get it back. So I decided to replace it with the latest edition, which cost 30 euros. It says to order it:

Bundesagentur für Arbeit
Service-Haus – Geschäftsstelle für Veröffentlichungen
Regensburger Straße 104
90478 Nürnberg
Fax 0911 179 11 47
e-mail: service-haus.veroeffentlichungen@arbeitsagentur.de

To be honest I have scarcely ever used it. It looks really useful. It is more than what I would call a glossary: it’s a big bilignual dictionary, with a lot of definitions and further information on the terms. However, I think it is more for translating from German to English, and it has a bias towards Germans. Or something like that.

I just looked up garden leave, which isn’t in there – just the sort of common British employment law vocabulary that I know is likely to be missing. And looking up freistellen and Freistellung, I find this particular meaning missing. It talks about releasing members of the works council from work to perform their duties, and it talks about training courses.

It’s a really useful-looking book. So why don’t I use it? Anyone else have any comments? Oh, I forgot – comments don’t work. (Jay Allen recommended me to update Movable Type from 2.64 to 3.33. But I don’t know).

Ah, now I see that it is actually available from Kater Verlag, under Arbeit, and that means you can see an excerpt if you click on Entscheidungshilfe.

Zur Zeit sind wegen technischer Probleme keine Kommentare möglich.

The reason no comments are possible here at the moment is because my comment-blocking system, MT-Blacklist (by Jay Allen of Movable Type, but no longer supported) is blocking some important combination of letters.

This in turn happened because some comedian sent me some spam comment designed to have this very effect.

I am using Movable Type 2.64, which is out of date and comes from a time before there was much comment spam. I see that languagehat uses MT 2.63, so I am not alone here. And today one of Steve’s commenters wrote:

bq. (I couldn’t post the comment with the full town name, because the system takes it, or at least the letters D—g, as “questionable content”.)

Thus are commenters censored and may not write Dryagovets. Here at Transblawg, however, Dryagovets is not the only thing you can’t write.

I will try to sort this out, but as MT Blacklist is no longer supported I may be forced to do without comments until I move the blog or start a new one. The latter is beginning to look more and more appealing.