It’s not often that Franconia makes it into BBC News:

bq. Pig manure swamps German village
A village in the German state of Bavaria is recovering after being flooded with liquid pig manure.
…
The sewage was half a metre (1.6ft) deep in places.
“The village was swamped with green-brown liquid – the mother of all muck,” police spokesman Rainer Prediger, from nearby Coburg, said.

The TV version was no less horrifying, although the locals appeared to be accepting it with their usual equanimity.

Der Stadtrat von Westminster will härter mit Fahrern umgehen, die ihre Strafzettel nicht bezahlen. Zu diesem Zwecke wurden die Kennzeichen der Sünder veröffentlich (Artikel in der Evening Standard zeigt ein Fahrzeug, das 25,000 Pfund schuldet).

Wer mindestens drei Strafzettel nicht bezahlt hat riskiert, dass eine Parkkralle angebracht wird und danach Besitzerdetails genau überprüft werden.

Über UK Criminal Justice Weblog

Two jam doughnuts and two marzipan doughnuts:

as a partial answer to this.

Source: Pillipp. (The marzipan doughnuts are very unusual and have become even rarer since this photo was taken)

Was bedeutet “samt Anhang” (“s.A.”) nach einer Geldsumme? Entweder “plus Zinsen” oder “plus Zinsen und Kosten”?

Hier ein Beispiel:

Das Oberlandesgericht Graz hat als Berufungsgericht durch den Senatspräsidenten des Oberlandesgerichtes Dr.Schweighofer und die Richter des Oberlandesgerichtes Dr.Schmeid und Dr.Koczett in der Rechtssache
der klagenden Partei 37O20 Volargne di Dolce, Verona, Italien, vertreten durch – Rechtsanwälte in Salzburg, gegen die beklagte Partei Petersgasse 73, 8010 Graz, vertreten durch Rechtsanwälte in Graz, wegen Lit. 5,050.241,70 samt Anhang, infolge Berufung der klagenden Partei gegen das Urteil des Landesgerichtes für Zivilrechtssachen Graz vom 28. Juni 1995, 13 Cg 321/93a-55, nach öffentlicher, mündlicher Berufungsverhandlung den

Beschluß gefaßt:
Der Berufung wird Folge gegeben.
Das angefochtene Urteil, das hinsichtlich des Zuspruches von Lit. 6,228.632,30 samt 5 % Zinsen seit 20.1.1992 in österreichischen Schillingen zum Kurs der Wiener Börse (Devise) Mailand am Zahlungstag und hinsichtlich der Abweisung von 10 % Zinsen aus Lit. 5,050.241,70 seit 20.1.1992 als unbekämpft unberührt bleibt, wird im übrigen, und zwar hinsichtlich des Betrages von Lit. 5,050.241,7O samt 5 % Zinsen seit 20.1.1992 einschließlich der Kostenentscheidung, aufgehoben und die Rechtssache in diesem Umfang zur neuerlichen Verhandlung und Entscheidung an das Erstgericht zurückverwiesen.

I’m posting this message which I got from the u-forum mailing list (mailing lists for translators):

bq. The IATE database has been put into production in the EU’s translation
services in summer last year. It is not yet accessible to the public. The
URL you have used is a link to a test database; when we noticed that this
url has been published in various newsgroups on the internet we had to
block the access to avoid performance problems. The system is today simply
not ready to be used by the public. However, the developments that are
necessary to make IATE available to external users with a satisfying level
of service are ongoing. We hope that you will be able to use IATE from mid
2006.

bq. Until then Eurodicautom will remain accessiblehttp://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/Controller
(). Please note that
Eurodicautom had some technical problems recently. The system is, however,
up and running again.
Best regards,
IATE Support Team
Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU

The word regeln is used a lot in German legal texts. I’ve always been irritated to see it translated as regulate.

I recently received a query quoting a question ‘Is theft regulated by the common law in England and Wales?’

This is really confusing. Often regeln means to lay down, and in this case the questioner probably meant, ‘Is theft a common-law offence?’ or ‘Is theft defined by the common law?’ The answer would be ‘No, theft is a statutory offence. There are hardly any common-law offences in England today, but one of them is murder. And theft is defined in the Theft Act’.

But this sounds as if it meant ‘Does the common law influence the definition of theft?’ The answer to this is more difficult. On the one hand, every element of theft is further defined in case law, and I suppose this is a possible meaning of regulate. But on the other hand, one has to wonder whether the questioner is stupid enough to have logically meant this.

And yet, statutes do regulate things. For instance, they may regulate the sentences for various crimes, or traffic flow can be regulated. Try a simple search of the British National Corpus, using regulated as the search word, to see how the word is commonly used.