The Daytona Beach Newsjournal has an article about an unsatisfactory interpreter, her lack of qualifications and the problems of selecting court interpreters. I hope it will remain available, but just in case, here is some:

Unable to speak English, Juan Ramon Alfonzo stood before a judge and expected to receive probation for stealing a toolbox.
To his surprise, the judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison, followed by 15 years of probation, for stealing a dump truck valued at $125,000.
Now, court officials agree Alfonzo entered the wrong plea because his court-hired interpreter, Marianne Verruno, provided an incomprehensible translation.
Two weeks ago, a circuit judge tossed out his plea and sentencing to allow Alfonzo to start the court process over.
“Ms. Verruno is far from being fluent in Spanish,” an expert interpreter wrote in a report to the judge. “She may be conversant enough for social situations but her Spanish is not minimally adequate to interpret in a court of law.”

(The article goes into more detail on the dump truck / toolbox story). And on the subject of qualification:

Local court officials say they cannot recall another complaint about bad translations. A federal accrediting association, however, says Florida may be vulnerable to similar problems. It is one of several states in the nation that do not require court-appointed interpreters to pass a skills test and be accredited by the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators. …

Court records indicate Verruno was required only to fill out a one-page application to be hired as a court translator. On it, Verruno wrote she was fluent in Spanish and aphasia — the ability to translate for people unable to speak, such as stroke victims.

I suppose it takes an extreme case for lawyers to notice the problems.

The expert, Maria Cecilia Marty, evaluated transcripts from the court’s digital recording in English and Spanish, and said the interpretation did not make sense.
“The interpretation was so highly deficient, (Alfonzo) never even got to the part about his right to go to jury trial,” Marty said in a telephone interview. “Maybe, if he got 5 percent of what was said, he was lucky. “

(Link removed re malware, 2017)

Deutsch und Englisch / German and English

Many years ago, I had a copy of Deutsches Bilanzrecht, by Brooks/Mertin, which was a great secret weapon. That was a third edition of extracts from German accounting legislation, with a synoptic translation into English, and these extracts contained the central materials, so the book was also a textbook on the subject.

Now a new edition has appeared. I can reveal that I did very little indeed to deserve a mention in the preface. Congratulations to the Fry & Bonthrone Partnerschaft for the translation into English.

At the moment I can say that the book is a lot thicker and the margins possibly even thinner. The third edition had a twenty-page table comparing German accounting provisions and US GAAP, whereas the fourth has over 120 pages on similarities and differences of IFRSs, US GAAP and German General Accepted Accounting Principles.

Robin Bonthrone says the ‘founded by J. Brooks and D. Mertin’ on the cover did not come from Fry & Bonthrone. Still, it’s like t-shirts – you’re nobody today without a howler on the front or back cover.

I missed the opening of Legalesed, by Derek Gill Franßen, of ProZ fame. He is an American, his profile says, and indeed you would have to be American to have a father called Zane, who is a federal judge.

Jurabilis announces the Amtsrichterblog. (Link removed)

There’s only one entry as yet, in German of course, but it looks promising.

An English (lay) magistrate blogs at The Law West of Ealing Broadway; his latest entry relates to language:

Roger was helping the police with their enquiries (now whatever happened to that phrase? It seems to have gone the way of blunt instruments) and when officers asked him to open the boot of his car they found a considerable quantity of the very stolen goods that they were looking for. The conversation was recorded as:-

Roger: “Oh. Fuck me. Look at that”. PC: “Is that your property?” Roger: “Course it ain’t. You know what it is. Just my fucking luck, ain’t it?” PC: Did you steal them?” Roger: “Nah. I’m only the driver. Talk about unlucky. D’you know, if I fell in a barrel of tits I’d come out sucking me thumb”.

LATER NOTE: Apparently I was fooled by this. Indeed, to judge from the comments on some other blogs, I was a complete raving idiot (fortunately I seem to have escaped the firing line so far). The German judge’s blog was shortlived and seems to have been created to generate traffic for another site.

Video via pt at Yahoogroups.

In all fairness, some West Germans should be asked to draw West Germany too.

A more coherent European wide [sic] legal language, by Viola Heutger, of the University of Utrecht, is an online paper (PDF or html) I found through DORES, whose latest set of new publications relating to language and law has just appeared. It doesn’t concentrate, as one might have expected, on the common law – civil law divide.

bq. The German formalistic Civil Law Codification is largely unreadable as far as a non-German lawyer is concerned. Without any special indication as to the use of terminology this codification can rarely be understood. If we remain with the German language we must realize that with a knowledge of German legal language the other German-speaking legal systems of Switzerland and Austria or not automatically accessible (Grossfeld, 180). Very simple terms have different meanings. When a German speaks of Besitz, he means factual possession. However, an Austrian lawyer understands Besitz as the factual possession including the animus domini. What a German understands under Besitz, is for an Austrian Innehabung. So even German speaking lawyers from Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland will not understand automatically each other’s concept-based legal terminology. It cannot be expected e.g. that the German knows what is meant by the Austrian terms of a Präsenzdiener or a Landeshauptmann, a Aufsandungsurkunde or a Superädifikat.

I imagine the varying meaning of Besitz is more of a problem than the last four terms.

The article and bibliography contain some useful links.