LAWgical reports that three universities, in Montreal, Montpellier and Saarbrücken, have started a kind of academic JuraWiki. The former has 52 articles at present, apparently; the latter has 3157 pages.

Looking at the first screen of JurisPedia, it presents Arabic, English, German, French, Spanish and Chinese pages. Starting with the English pages, I found a recent entry called Introduction to the basic and the constitutional law (de) – but not in German, in (non-native) English:

bq. The basic law of the Federal Republic of Germany is the actually legal version of a constitution that realises the idea of governing the state and protecting the rights of the state’s citizens and humans. The Federal Constitutional Court was furthermore created to be the Basic Law’s guardian. It watches over the observance of newly created rights and amplifies by this the specifications of this law.

I wish people did not believe that furthermore means also in every possible context! Sorry about that outburst – I am going to have to get used to this. I could not find any German entries at all, but I did find myself suddenly in the (empty?) German section of Belgium.

This JurisPedia has a slightly French slant, I imagine. JuraWiki is basically German, although of course it offers English too. The standard English and German Wikipedias also offer law.

In casting around for examples, I came across a ‘Simple’ English Wikipedia. Here is some comic relief on law from that:

bq. A jurist is a professional who studies and argues the rules of law. An ethicist is someone who usually works only within codes of conduct based upon what people feel is right or wrong rather than what the law says.

bq. When leaders enforce the legal code honestly, even upon themselves and their friends, this is called rule of law. It’s rare – but many people believe it is possible, especially in a democracy. Some people don’t like the idea of the rule of law because they think it’s more about keeping the power in the hands of the people who already have it, rather than keeping everybody safe.

I wonder if this was discussed at Wikimania. I realize a Wiki is what its users make it, but the more there are, the less hope there is of sense taking hold.

There is also a Wiktionary, btw, which is a huge project. I’m mentioning it here for the sake of completeness.

P.S. I apologize for any capitalization errors in words like LAWgical, WikiMania, JurisPedia and so on. I just cannot be bothered to look these things up.

Michael Eichelhäher gesucht

Yahoo! Suche Translator BETA:

bq. Yahoo! Suche Translator findet die relevantesten Seiten zu Ihrem Suchbegriff in mehreren Sprachen und gibt die Suchergebnisse in deutscher Sprache aus.

This must have appeared in July and I missed it:

bq. Yahoo plans to launch on Thursday a service that translates German search queries into English and French and returns results from around the globe in German.

bq. Currently, less than 10 percent of all Web pages are in German, so when German speakers search the Internet for information they are missing out on the huge amount of content that may be useful to them but is in a different language, said Eckart Walther, vice president of product management at Yahoo Search.

Anyway, machine translation will give the gist of many sites, and if not, it’s a convenient way to get some light relief.

I looked up Enten (ducks). Curiously, Enten was obviously translated into English, but not always translated back – Ducks Unlimited was announced as Duckt unbegrenztes, and Ducks of the World as Duckt sich von der Welt, but it was always possible to click on the original English text.

A search for Bratwurst produced a Wisconsin site as the first hit:

bq. Bratwurst, Nahrung Seele Wisconsins
Einschließlich Rezepte für Bratwurst und klassische Seiten
“nichts geht besser als Bier, Gören und Babys und Michael Eichelhäher am Wochenende TTN”

bq. Bratwurst, Wisconsin’s Soul Food
Including Recipes for Bratwurst and Classic Sides
“Nothing goes better than beer, brats and babes and Michael Jay on the Weekend TTN”

(From Peter Müller)

We have had two extremely hot spells this summer. Now there have been a few cool days and the German press is full of complaints and suggestions we will have no summer this year. Are memories so short? taz even suggests the bad weather explains the blogging craze:

bq. Doch bei all dem Hype, der um die neuen Webtechniken gemacht wird: Je mehr mitmachen, umso höher ist naturgemäß auch das Grundrauschen – also der prozentuale Anteil der völlig unnützen und belanglosen Beiträge und Blogs. Aber der Sommer dieses Jahr ist trüb. Und kalt. Das Freibad fällt also aus, und viele haben schon jetzt die Heizung angeworfen. Die richtige Zeit also, mal einen wirklich guten Blog zu bauen.

The mysterious Abnu of Wordlab pointed out to me that there was an article on German rap in the New York Times this week. Bushido’s music has been labelled only suitable for those over 18.

bq. German parents and the news media have expressed shock at hardcore lyrics, which, they say, glorify a dangerous American ghetto fantasy that doesn’t exist in Germany and shouldn’t be encouraged.
In response, the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, an agency set up in 1954 in the sensitive era of post-Nazi reconstruction, has expanded its mandate to rap after spending most of the past two decades monitoring neo-Nazi music. Four rap titles have been added in the last year, joining seven others recently added to the more than 450 songs or albums the department has put on its list since the 1980’s. Inclusion is more serious than an explicit lyrics sticker on a CD cover. It means that the offending album can’t be advertised and stores can’t sell it to anyone younger than 18.

(Here’s an article in German about that office, the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien.)

I’ll skip over the political concerns and go straight to the linguistic ones:

bq. German rap has traditionally ceded ground to imports from across the Atlantic. Though some German hip-hop groups found success in the 1990’s, German, unlike French and English, is not a language that accommodates the genre, say some artists.

bq. The language features many combination words with an avalanche of syllables that don’t rhyme well together, Bushido said. That impairs a rapper’s ability to let loose a smooth and creative flow. That, combined with inferior production quality and beats, kept young people listening to rap imports, said Eric Remberg, the head of label Aggro Berlin, who prefers to go by the monicker Specter.

See German hip hop (Wikipedia) Deutscher Hip Hop (Wikipedia)

Why do Germans normally pronounce the word Curry differently from the English pronunciation – after all, the latter contains no foreign sounds. Is it the spelling that puts them off? Do all nationalities have this problem with words with foreign spelling?

The large Duden confirms my impression from watching German TV cooks that the main pronunciation is a bit like Körri, with a secondary pronunciation more like the English one.

1) ‘koeri (the o and e are supposed to be joined)
2) ‘kari

Perhaps Phonoloblog would know?

‘Comes now the plaintiff’ is an American expression – perhaps that’s why I find it so weird. There was a discussion on avoiding Latinisms in The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog (I link to Evan Schaeffer’s other blog, Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground (hmm, it used to be called Notes from…).

One of the commenters there writes:

For example, the phrase “Comes Now” at the start of a pleading. If the pleading was actually read in open court to the illiterate masses it makes sense. Otherwise, i’t’s just a really odd phrase. “Comes Now Mr. Brown, by and and through his attorney. . .” I routinely banish that from my pleadings if the secretary, used to other lawyers, includes it.

But the thing is, to me it wouldn’t even make sense if it was read in open court. It would have to be ‘Here comes the plaintiff’. Why not? I mean, even one of those American comedy shows had the punchline ‘Here come de judge’, didn’t it? Of course, that wouldn’t make it any easier to translate. In Romain I found ‘comes and defends: es erscheint (der Beklagte) und läßt sich wie folgt auf die Klage ein’.

To quote another comment:

Re: silly antiquated English pleading — I gained incredible respect for a (female) probate commissioner I met last summer, who said flatly, “no one is going to come or pray on any of my paperwork.”