An article by Joachim Güntner in the NZZ (Welche Autorenrechte gebühren einem Übersetzer?) takes up the topic of how literary translators are to get better payment.

Publishers are loth to regard translators as another kind of author, and one of them referred to the idea of a fair price as ‘medieval’. Translators who expect better payment and also a share of profits are seen as acting above their status.

bq. Einen Roman von – sagen wir – Umberto Eco zu übersetzen, hat einen höheren Rang als die Übertragung einer italienischen Gebrauchsanweisung ins Deutsche. Niemand bezweifelt das.

Well, that was a rather weighted example, wasn’t it? (I bet more people read the instructions than they do the Eco…)

The article quotes a judge who thinks translators should be paid the same amount as secondary-school teachers, and Burkhart Kroeber, who translates Eco, who compares the payment rights or pianists or theatre directors. There is also a description of the rather civilized payments system of the Diogenes Verlag in Zurich, guaranteeing a share of profits to a certain extent, and above that sharing profits among translators or putting them towards financing new translations.

Meanwhile, in the new ADÜ-Nord Infoblatt, Draga Gradincevic-Savic describes the evil effects of the new statute on the payment of interpreters. No sooner is a German Act passed trying to ensure that police interpreters are paid a reasonable fee than the police oblige those working for them to enter into standard agreements for low fees, and what’s more, with no guarantee of frequent work such as the Act envisages.

Penguin science fiction flyer c. 1980:

London c. now (defaced poster, December 2002):

Sentencing is the topic of Volume 58 of the Stanford Law Review – all articles are available online. The volume consists of three issues: the first deals with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the second contains miscellaneous articles, and the third contains articles on the death penalty. .

(über strafprozess, Konrad Jeker’s Swiss criminal law blog)

Probably too late to send anyone this soap:

(from FeMaledictions)

BILDblog suspects that BILD did not really understand some English (‘The two leaders shook hands’) – although I have to say that Pravda’s English is not much to write home about either.

Pravda:

bq. “We are witnessing the events of paramount significance. Two big leaders shook hands. (manifest reference to Gorbachev and Reagan). But we have to wait for a long time before the Eighth One will come forth and sign a final peace agreement on Earth.” (January 1988)

BILD:

bq. 1988 kündigte sie an: „Zwei große Führer werden ihre Hände schütteln, aber wir müssen lange warten, ehe die großen Acht Frieden bringen.“ Tatsächlich: Gorbatschow und Reagan beenden den Kalten Krieg. Rußland trat 2005 einer Staatenorganisation bei, die G8 heißt – die großen Acht.

Did they have the same source? I am not sure how BILD could have got from “the Eighth One” to “die großen Acht”.

Another example:

bq. “Everything will melt away like ice yet the glory of Vladimir , the glory of Russia are the only things that will remain. Russia will not only survive, it will dominate the world. (1979)

bq. Zuvor würde aber der Ruhm „Wladimirs“ schmelzen wie Eis in der Sonne.

Here are some questions that came up at the seminar in Frankfurt on Saturday:

Schwere der Schuld
Have you a suggestion for translating Schwere der Schuld?

After tracing this term in § 153a of the Code of Criminal Procedure, I am happy with the translation used by the English translation of the StPO at the German Law Archive, degree of culpability, which supports one of the suggestions I made. It was objected that Schwere implies gravity or severity, but I think degree implies that.

However, it’s not the degree I have problems with, it’s the culpability. Degree of guilt sounds wrong, as you are either guilty or not. Culpability is close in meaning to guilt. The section quoted was actually § 57a of the Criminal Code, and that is translated on the German Law Archive site as the particular gravity of the convicted person’s guilt, which seems odd to me. Schuld is difficult to translate anyway.
You can talk about the gravity or seriousness of an offence, of course.
It was put to me that I might jog my mind if I thought of English texts on the same topic. It seems to me, though, that this degree of culpability is not relevant in considering whether to release an English person on parole. A Google search on parole factors release gets texts. Perhaps this is a factor in original sentencing, though. Then one thinks of aggravating and mitigating factors.

I looked at Tröndle/Fischer (commentary on the Criminal Code – forgot to mention the value of commentaries), which says something about the elements of murder being relevant in § 57a – and the elements of German murder are rather extreme.

I have not found anything I like better than degree of culpability.

Legalitätsprinzip / Opportunitätsprinzip
It was suggested that merely rendering these as legality principle and opportunity principle would not be widely understood. I actually read those terms in English in a book on comparative criminal justice last week, but I think legality principle is particularly suspect, because it has more than one meaning.

Suggestions were mandatory prosecution and explicit prosecutorial discretion, and also prosecution ex officio. I suppose in context mandatory prosecution is OK, but it does still sound to me as if the public prosecutor were obliged to prosecute all the world.

I see Romain has principle of mandatory / discretionary prosecution. The term prosecutorial discretion I found on the website of the International Criminal Justice Review, which also mentioned compulsory prosecution (see article on Prosecutorial Discretion and Plea Bargaining in the United States, France, Germany, and Italy: A Comparative Perspective by Yue Ma).

The Euro Justice website has this:

bq. This rule of mandatory prosecution (Legalitätsprinzip) has however been limited or even eroded by a growing number of exceptions. Today, prosecution is in effect mandatory only with respect to most felonies (Verbrechen), i.e., offences with a statutory minimum of one year imprisonment (cf. Sect. 12 subs. 1 CC). Even for specified felonies directed against the interests of the state, e.g., high treason or participation in a terrorist organisation (Sects. 153d, 153e CCP), the Federal prosecutor can dismiss the case, if there exists a countervailing public interest, or if the offender has subsequently helped to combat the danger for the state created by the offence.

(By the way, this site translates 5 Tagessätze as 5 day fines).

And the German Law Journal uses compulsory prosecution in Police Cautions and the Vanishing Differences between Legality and Discretion in European Criminal Justice Systems, by Michael Jasch.