Excuse me tearing my hair out, but I’ve just seen this recommended yet again, and it’s in several dictionaries, and it is wrong!

Under German law, a testator may leave stuff to a Vorerbe (prior heir) and a Nacherbe (subsequent heir). In the usual case, maybe a house to A for life, and when A dies, then to B.

That’s a bit like a life interest and a remainderman (remainderperson in some U.S. usage). A trust arises in English law, but the situation is similar. The remainderman gets what’s left.

These trusts can be quite complex. The testator may leave the estate to A for life, with remainder to B for life, and in that case, since clearly B’s heirs are not included, on B’s death the estate will revert to the testator – or rather, since the testator will be dead, it will revert to the testator’s heirs on intestacy (gesetzliche Erben). They are the reversioners.

It’s not a secret that revert means come back, is it?

But a Nacherbe is not a reversioner, not the heir(s) on intestacy of the testator. It might happen by coincidence, but that is not the definition. If any of those words fit, it will be remainderman, but since that’s a rather old-fashioned word unknown to the general public, people may want to write subsequent heir or final heir or something like that.

I haven’t got one law dictionary here that does not contain reversionary heir, sometimes alone (Dietl), sometimes as one alternative (Romain, von Beseler/Jacobs-Wüstefeld, Lister/Veth).

In About Translation, Riccardo (a long-since Flefoid, perhaps?) reports on translation news. Via Translator’s Blog, by Sonja Tomaskovic, who is building up an annotated links list.

Die barocke Kreuzigungsgruppe wird zur Zeit saniert. Stiftung Weltkulturerbe Bamberg. Mit Unterstützung von brose – Technik für Automobile.

The small shadow at the bottom right edge, the shadow of a person with a cross, is not me, btw.

Translation in the Trenches – ‘a blow-by-blow [account?] of a dog-eat-dog world’ is a translator’s weblog I’m unfamiliar with. I have my suspicions as to who Trench Warrior might be, but perhaps I’m wrong. Anyway, he mentions a number of translation problems that are familiar to me, so I may take one up in a separate entry.

This rings true:

bq. An entire German ad campaign was slung onto my virtual doorstep today. The catch: the one-hour turnaround.

bq. I’ve never pulled my hair or gnashed my teeth like an Edgar Allen Poe character, but I came damn close today. The copywriter had crafted a miniature masterpiece: tight copy that felt loose. The ads allegedly sported quotes from real people, but someone had obviously sweated over those lines for hours until they were just so.

bq. The bastard. I knew, I just knew he was only being that good to piss me off.

Are there Swiss legal blogs? I asked myself this question, and at the same time found the NZZ had published an article on specialized weblogs in Switzerland, from which it appeared that there are very few weblogs of any kind there. The article, in German, is no longer available free of charge (search in archives for Wissensbeschaffer im Frondienst / Fach-Blogs im Internet als neue Informationsquelle, 25 February 2005).

I found circle.ch, ‘A weblog about libre software, law, technology, politics and the like’. Here’s a January 2005 entry:

bq. Man mag es vielleicht gehört haben, dass das Bundesstrafgericht seinen Betrieb am 1. April 2004 in Bellinzona aufgenommen hat. Nun, Bellinzona liegt nun wahrlich nicht gerade zentral, dafür kann man dem Charme südlicher Gefilde fröhnen; wenn man denn dazu kommt. Jedenfalls ist man aus der Region Bern schon fast darauf angewiesen, sich vor Ort eine Unterkunft zu organisieren, wenn man denn rechtzeitig am Gericht sein will.

bq. Es hat sich nun herausgestellt, dass Hotels in Bellinzona gar nicht etwa einfach zu finden sind [1]. Befriedigend waren dann aber die Resultate der beiden anderen Links [2,3]. Fand das irgendwie mitteilungswert ;)

Here is a collection of Swiss blogs.

Kookie’s Welt is by a lawyer but not about law.

While inspecting, I found a just.graham, a Swiss-British (non-legal) blog and a link to a BBC article on the hygiene inspection made when you move out of a Swiss flat.

bq. When the inspection ended, I was given a six-page list of improvements I needed to make and, as I ushered him towards the door, he had one last instruction.
Passing the fuse box, he pulled it open.
“Look”, he said triumphantly. “Dust!”
A week later, the house is clean, my muscles ache and my hands are sore from cleaning fluids.

Signandsight, Perlentaucher’s English site went online on March 1.

It is subtitled ‘Arts, Essays, Ideas from Germany’.

Perlentaucher.de is a site that collects, summarizes and links to German-language books and reviews. The English site presents these to the world. The editor is John Lambert.