(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.

We know that all translators earn at different rates. Literary translators translate stuff like Finnigans Wake and supplement their income by selling matches on street corners. Technical translators are locked into CAT systems and forced into dwindling returns for repeats as a result. Financial translators charge £500 per page for glossy brochures on stock-exchange startups but take several weeks to research them. And then there are those freelances who charge £15 per 1,000 words and make £300 per hour because they employ harems of audiotypists.

On a German translators’ mailing list, u-forum, there is a heated discussion on this topic (a euphemism for a bit of a free-for-all, with all sides accusing each other of ruining the market). Should I be amazed at the vitriol?

It’s focused on an article by Luis Cerna, based on rates in Germany, in which he says you should not work for more than 2000 hours per year for the sake of your health (what health?), and only 1000 of those hours will be translation, as opposed to acquisition, bookkeeping, organization etc.

Bei u-forum gibt es eine Diskussion auf Deutsch über Übersetzereinkommen für Freiberufler in Deutschland. u-forum findet man in dieser Liste bei Alexander von Obert.

Es geht zum Teil um diesen Artikel von Luis Cerna (deutsche Version).

LATER NOTE: The ADÜ-Nord’s survey on translators’ rates has now been published in book form. There’s a summary (in German) on the ADÜ-Nord website.