Terms related to the Internet defined in legal texts, mostly German. By the way, is there an English equivalent of DAU (dummster anzunehmender Anwender), or is it a purely German phenomenon?

Peter Müller hat eine hübsche Sammlung von juristischen Internet-Definitionen entdeckt, DAUFAQ.de:

Frage: Womit bearbeitet man Homepages?
Antwort: Es antwortet LG Düsseldorf, Urteil vom 25.11.2000, Az. 2a O 106/00:
Zur Bearbeitung von Homepages werden FTP-Programme benötigt.

Man sieht wieder mal, mit welchen Vorlagen die Übersetzer konfrontiert werden.

Frage: Wie verbreiten geschickte Täter Viren?
Antwort: Es antwortet Müller / Wabnitz / Janovsky, Wirtschaftskrimininalität, 4. Auflage, 1997, Kap. 3, Rdn. 17:
Ein geschickter Täter kann nicht nur den Rechner der jeweiligen Firma dadurch verseuchen, dass er den Virus auf den Rechner selbst programmiert; es genügt vielmehr schon, “infizierte” Disketten in den Rechner einzubringen.

Und was machen die ungeschickten?

Frage: Warum verwirrt das Internet insbesondere Juristen?
Antwort: Es antwortet Kuner, Christoph, Internet für Juristen – Zugang, Recherche, Kommunikation, Sicherheit, Informationsquellen, 2. Auflage, 1999, Seite 4:
Juristen sind von Berufs wegen an hierarchische Strukturen gewöhnt. Das Internet stellt jedoch eine neuartige Struktur dar, da es nicht hierarchisch aufgebaut ist, […]

Siemens paid for Gizmodo’s flight to CeBIT and hotel there. Gizmodo on arrival at CeBIT:

bq. Did you know that the famed German sausages are really just giant hot dogs covered in a curry?

Let’s hope the gadget reports are more accurate. But worryingly, a picture by Joel of Gizmodo showing a Chrysler convertible done up as a German emergency doctor’s vehicle, suggests some confusion among Americans of emergency doctor (Notarzt) and notary (Notar) – compounded by the confusion of a German notary with a U.S. notary public.

bq. assuming “Notarzt” means “emergency,” unless Germany has a pressing need for on-call notary public services.

So be careful if you’re in Germany and want to have something certified – go to the parish office, not the notary, and don’t call out the emergency doctor either – you may find yourself with no will but a stiff bill to pay.

Thanks to Abnu of Wordlab for the tip.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the translation system at webtranslate.de works very well:

(Original) Auch bei längeren Texten hat uns die Qualität der Übersetzung überrascht. Lediglich bei komplizierten Nebensatzkonstruktionen liegt das Übersetzungsportal nicht immer richtig. Der Anwender erhält dann lediglich eine Aneinanderreihung der Wörter und muss sich mühsam aus den verschiedenen Bedeutungen die richtige heraussuchen. Kurze, einfache Sätze wurden dagegen meist verständlich übersetzt, wenn auch nicht immer idiomatisch korrekt.

(webtranslate version) The quality of the translation has surprised us also at longer texts. The translation portal isn’t always correctly located merely for complicated subordinate clause constructions. The user gets then merely a stringing together of the words and must the right with difficulty find themselves from the different meanings. Short, simple sentences were usually translated against this understandably if also not always idiomatically correct. There are more sophisticated versions for sale.

Babelfish / Google translate produces this:

(Babelfish/Google translate) Even with longer texts the quality of the translation surprised us. Only with complicated subordinate clause constructions the translation portal does not lie always correctly. The user receives then only a lining up of the words and must laboriously from the different meanings the correct pick itself out. Short, simple sentences were usually understandably translated against it if also not always idiomatisch correct.

This was reported by muepe.de via Streitsache. The system is free of charge for 500-stroke texts (does the 500 include spaces?). There is also a word look-up feature.

The article emphasizes that webtranslate handles complex sentences well and has a good dictionary. The samples above show that Babelfish did not have idiomatisch in its dictionary. However, the results of the two programs are both OK, and Babelfish doesn’t have the 500-character limit.

We often make fun of machine translation. Of course machine translation is not bad – up to a point. For instance, it is useful for skimming texts in the Internet. It can be improved if its dictionary is enlarged or if, say, you define some terms as legal or economic and tell the program it is translating a legal or economic text – then it will translate Bank as bank, not bench (which will nearly always be right) and bar as Anwaltsstand, not Bar. Conversely, if you run a hotel and have your menu machine translated for your website, you are almost certain to fail. If you translate 2,000 menus, you may be able to automate the translation if you feed the right material in (it’s not easy to tell what is the right translation of a menu in a foreign language). But if you want to use MT in a firm, you will need to consider if it doesn’t cost you more to have for-publication or for-serious-understanding texts revised by human translators who would have been faster starting from scratch.

Sur Mesure is a French legal weblog by Helene Cohen (via iNews: Lex in the City), which reports:

bq. The aim is to give an insight for French and English insurers and other commercial entities into topical issues of English and French law (depending on which side of La Manche they are on) that might affect them.
Most of the articles are in French, though Helene tells me that she will be doing a short precis of each piece in English soon, as well.

The blog describes itself as ‘News and comment on the intersection of English and French law’.

Following my entry on civil-law notaries in Alabama, here is a picture kindly sent me by Bill Freeman (click to enlarge).

Civil-law notaries means notaries like the ones in Germany!

Here are the two links on the picture: William J. Freeman, Attorney, and Civil-Law Notary.

This is the Pegnitz, coming from Nuremberg, before it joins the Rednitz to form the Regnitz (which is why a friend of mine from Berlin refers to this area as Regnitz an der Pegnitz).