Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words had an entry this week on reading the Riot Act.

bq. These days, it’s just a figurative expression meaning to give an individual or a group a severe scolding or caution, or to announce that some unruly behaviour must cease. But originally it was a deadly serious injunction to a rioting crowd to disperse.

Apparently, the Riot Act had to be read out very carefully and without omitting any words, or it would not be effective. During Jacobite riots c. 1715, this Act was passed, making it a felony if a group of twelve or more persons refused to disperse more than an hour after magistrates had told them to do so. The situation perhaps had some resemblance to that in the Ukraine this week.

It’s only in the more general modern meaning that ‘jemandem die Leviten lesen’ is an equivalent. The somewhat angry site GehMirNichAufDenSack.de, in its Floskeln fürs Volk, goes into little detail.

Michael Rowley (on the ITI Gernet mailing list) says it derives from the custom of an 8th century Bishop of Metz, who laid down that his clergy, whose morals he did not consider up to scratch, should have the relevant parts f the book of Leviticus, which treat of the rules of behaviour of the priests and Levites, read to them. The German Wikipedia says that Leviticus 26 was often used for reprimands in the Middle Ages.

Ein Wiki auf deutsch für technische Redakteure. Alexander von Obert hat auch einige Übersetzerseiten und -links.

Quite some time ago, Robin Stocks at Carob linked to Alexander von Obert’s Techwriter’s Wiki, or Wiki des Techwriters Home. This is all in German. There is a part for translators there too, with subcategories for Software, Texterstellung and Juristisches. It’s all very new as yet.

Alexander von Obert runs Übersetzerportal (frames), which has links to jobs, books for sale, dictionaries, to Techwriter’s Home (the original site from which all this developed), to Richard Schneider’s Nachrichtenportal (opens in a frame), always worth looking at, to Bruno Aeschbacher’s list of translators’ mailing lists and to Alexander’s calendar of events. The last, and perhaps other sections, should be taken over by the wiki.

On the Techwriter’s Home page, there are also a large number of links for translators.

In particular, Alexander runs mailing lists for literary translators (u-litfor) and the hoi polloi translators (u-forum). He thinks literary translators are brilliant. The trouble with a literary translators’ list is that half is interesting and half consists of requests to each other to find existing official translations into German of quotations that come up in other works.

wood s lot (November 24th) shows three textbook disclaimer stickers:

They are originally from Bifurcated Rivets, which has more.

wood s lot also gives links to some anti-evolution sites.

Schott’s Original Miscellany appeared in the UK in 2002 and became a bestseller. Ben Schott created a bizarre collection of useless facts, but the collection didn’t seem forced or twee or self-conscious. What sounds like a more self-conscious German equivalent appeared in August 2004, Ankowitschs Kleines Konversationslexikon. Meanwhile, Schott has been translated into German, and the translator adapted some of the lists to German, but if one is to believe ‘Welt am Sonntag’, not very convincingly (the number one German Christmas pop song being an unmeaningful category). It is in this German adaptation that Ankowitsch excels. Links all to amazon.de – might be worth looking at as a Christmas present – and the original might be useful for translators – it does have an index):

Schott’s Original Miscellany

Schotts Sammelsurium

Dr. Ankowitschs kleines…

I realized the translation had been adapted when I watched that strange TV programme, Elke Heidenreichs ‘Lesen!’.

I had to go to the Berlin Verlag website to find who was responsible for translating / adapting Schott into German:

bq. Aus dem Englischen unter Mitarbeit von Matthias Strobel u. a.

The following picture has nothing to do with the remembrance days in November, but shows the Germans getting ready for Advent. Each of these wreaths should get four tasteful candles implanted into it before next Sunday.

Eric Bakovic at Language Log has a post on legalese. He refers to a short radio piece on npr reporting that many jurors are confused by the language of jury instructions.

bq. Numerous studies show that jurors are confused by the legal instructions given to them on how to decide a person’s guilt or innocence. So, California is simplifying them, but not everyone likes the changes.

The question is how simple the instructions are to become, and whether those simplifying them are doing more harm than good.

California’s instructions won’t be ready till spring 2005, but some other states have already simplified theirs. A legal problem is that many instructions (they vary from crime to crime) have been fought out and defined in case law, and if the rephrased instructions are erroneous, a case may have to be retried.

The rewriting task force is headed by an appeals judge, Carol Corrigan. who speaks briefly. She says Latin and law French need to be simplified, hence ‘mitigating circumstances’ becomes ‘factors that make the crime less worthy of punishment’ – but that is neither brief (people’s attention spans are said to be short) nor accurate, is it? Does it not mean ‘reasons to reduce the punishment’?

The programme also quoted an English professor, Laurie Rozakis, author of ‘English Grammar for the Utterly Confused’:

bq. I’m a very big proponent of clear, direct, simple prose. […] Make it communicative; make it communicate quickly and easily — especially when someone’s life is at stake.

Bakovic concludes:

bq. Movements to “simplify” legalese are popping up all over the place, and have already made inroads in some states (according to this NPR piece). Is there a linguist involved in any of these movements? I sure hope so.

The previous Language Log post, by Mark Liberman, also deals with legal language and is worth reading, but I can’t understand it myself and am going to drink some coffee.