There is a basically genealogical site online, Scottish Documents, with copies of Scottish wills up to 1900 and a search service for others you can order. The site shows some wills in the original form, as graphics.

There is a glossary of unfamiliar words – here is an excerpt:

bq. Abuilyements [of one’s body]: clothing, or garments
Act: formal decision
addettit: indebted to, owing
air: heir
alienate: sell
aliment: a maintenance
allenarly: only, solely or exclusively
anent: concerning
annalzie: alienate, or sell
annualrent : interest on a loan, paid annually
apparent heir: not the person who “appears” to be heir to landed property, but the heir who has already succeeded to it
appraisement: valuation
articles of roup: the conditions under which the property was to be auctioned
auchtand: owing
Availl: worth, or monetary value
awand: owing

The FAQs also provide definitions, for instance of will, testament (‘testament’ has more to do with probate than wills), testament testamentar, testament dative, eik (apparently a codicil) and more.

I had hoped to see a holograph will (handschriftliches Testament) but didn’t happen on one. There are wills of famous people, so I looked for Robert Louis Stevenson, who died in Samoa at the age of 44 of tuberculosis. Henry James was one of his executors, but did not act.

bq. That the said Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson Advocate of the Scots Bar died at Vailima in the Island of Upolu, Samoa upon the third day of December Eighteen hundred and Ninety four a British Subject whose domicile of Origin was Scotch and whose Will is Valid by Scotch Law, his domicile at death being doubtful That the Deponent is Executor nominated by him along with Henry James Novelist London, (who declined to act) in his Last Will and Testament executed by him in September Eighteen hundred and ninety three …

(I like the use of ‘Scotch’ here, which is of course a perfectly good word – but then it made me want a Scotch egg, and in order to make one of those I would have to prematurely slaughter a couple of Thuringian sausages, which would be going too far).

(Thanks to Rainer Langenhan of Handakte WebLAWg for a tip-off by email).

It’s clear that the BBC uses American terms on its website. I don’t say it’s wrong, if they have lots of American readers, but it seems odd to me. I mentioned this on January 13th. Now I am looking at the story ‘”Nazi” dog owner gets sentenced’, of February 5th. No matter if I read the World Edition or the UK Edition, the following strikes me:

bq. “Adolf is a very sweet dog,” said the man’s attorney, Nicole Bumann-Zarske.
“He loves cookies just like his owner!”

I don’t at all mind ‘attorney’ for ‘Rechtsanwalt’ – I sometimes use it myself. It’s more precise than ‘lawyer’, and I wouldn’t use the specifically English terms ‘barrister’ and ‘solicitor’ to translate foreign lawyer designations. It’s a long time since I’ve thought of ‘cookies’ as anything other than an Internet matter, though.

I wouldn’t swear to the whole article being in U.S. English – there may well be some Britishisms too.

There’s a sad and bizarre news story about 18 Chinese cockle pickers being drowned on Morecambe beach. 14 more survived. They may have been illegal immigrants being exploited by someone.

bq. Police said they were of Oriental appearance and they are questioning them with the help of Chinese interpreters.

LATER NOTE: I found it odd to hear the cockles described on German TV news and in the press as ‘kostbare Herzmuscheln’ (‘valuable/precious cockles’). The term I read in the British press was ‘lucrative’, which makes more sense. According to the Independent (February 7th):

bq. The immigrants were enticed to the Red Bank sands near Morecambe by the prospect of easy riches. The bay’s high-quality cockles fetch £10 per 50kg bag for the employer and a picker can fill one in an hour. There is said to be £8m-worth of cockles in the bay.

Von Professor Lundmarks Website (Uni Münster):
From Professor Lundmark’s website at Münster University:

Bei dem “Talking Law Dictionary“ (Arbeitstitel) handelt es sich um ein Projekt zur Erstellung eines multimedialen zweisprachigen Rechtswörterbuchs, das nicht nur in traditioneller Buchform, sondern zusätzlich auch auf einer begleitenden CD-ROM erscheinen wird. Auf der CD-ROM wird die Aussprache sämtlicher Einträge auf englisch und deutsch zur Verfügung stehen.

(The Talking Law Dictionary (working title) is a project to make a multimedia bilingual legal dictionary that is available not only in traditional print form, but also on an accompanying CD-ROM. The CD-ROM will give the pronunciation of all the entries in English and German).

Wozu noch ein neues Wörterbuch? Diese Frage könnte man sich auf Grund der Vielzahl von Exemplaren, die gegenwärtig auf dem Markt erhältlich sind, durchaus stellen. Nimmt man jedoch aus der Masse nur die juristischen Wörterbücher heraus, so reduziert sich die Auswahl bereits erheblich. Lässt man nun noch die einsprachigen, erklärenden Wörterbücher – sowohl auf deutscher als auch auf englischer Seite – außen vor, so kann man die verbleibenden Übersetzungswörterbücher an einer Hand abzählen. Hierbei fällt auf, dass sich die fachlich anspruchsvolleren Werke (z.B. Dietl/Lorenz, Romain) in einer Preisklasse von ca 150 – 300 € bewegen, während die in einer für Studierende erschwinglichen Preisklasse verfügbaren Titel (z.B. Köbler, Pons) sprachliche Mängel aufweisen.

(What is the point of a new dictionary? …There are not many bilingual law dictionaries … and the higher-quality ones (e.g. Dietl/Lorenz, Romain) are in a price class of between 150 and 300 euros, while those that students can afford (e.g. Köbler, Pons) have language errors.

Aus Gründen der Authentizität werden alle Begriffe von erfahrenen Juristen gesprochen. Zu diesem Zweck ist es gelungen, namhafte Richterinnen und Richter aus Österreich, Deutschland, England und Schottland, den Vereinigten Staaten, Irland und Australien für das Projekt zu gewinnen.

(The speakers are all lawyers … well-known judges from Austria, Germany, England, Scotland, the U.S.A., Ireland and Australia.)

There was a fax form on the back of the DAJV Newsletter that came today. It said the cost of book and CD-ROM is EUR 49.90 and it is appearing in February.

ISBN 3 89699 192 2
Publisher is LexisNexis Deutschland but I couldn’t find anything on their website (www.lexisnexis.de)

Further to my entry of January 2nd, I have now solved the mystery of what is inside these little cakes.

They really are New Year cakes, but maybe they keep them till Fasching (Carnival), or maybe this cake shop – Beers Konditorei, Breite Straße, Nuremberg – makes a special display of them.

The contents are superior to the faceless British equivalent. The cake seems to be soaked in something, possibly with an almond flavour. The ears are white chocolate, but I think there’s a sliver of almond in there too. I am afraid the intact white mouse has an eye missing, and I don’t think I did that. So be careful what you buy.

I think their stuff looks a lot better than the photos on their website, so here are two more photos.

Here is what most bakeries have in the run-up to Shrove Tuesday:
Das übliche Faschingsangebot:

And here is more everyday stuff:

kohlehydrat reports that the Austrian Verfassungsgerichtshof (Constitutional Court of Appeal) is to consider the use of English job titles. The postal workers’ union has filed a constitutional complaint.

bq. Geht es den Anglizismen an den Kragen?
Der Verfassungsgerichtshof soll über englische Berufsbezeichnungen entscheiden. Die Postgewerkschafter haben eine Beschwerde eingebracht. Welche Chance hat diese Beschwerde?

Elsewhere, Werner Butschek, a Personalberater (career adviser?) is quoted, saying the new titles are a good thing. Some of them, he says, represent new jobs; others are now internationally understood; they also help advertise a company, and they make staff feel more important and work better.

I do find this kind of thing irritating. I agree with kohlehydrat that foreign words should not be imported just because they are fashionable or if they sound artificial.

If I understand the articles right, the new terms include CEO, Key Account Manager, Controller, Sales Manager

bq. Wir stehen vor dem Problem, dass vielfach unsere Bediensteten sich ein Wörterbuch für Wirtschaftsenglisch kaufen müssen, damit sie verstehen, was da in dem Schreiben überhaupt drinnen steht, in dem Schreiben oder vor allem in dem Bescheid, den sie gekriegt haben. Früher haben wir zum Beispiel eine Personalstelle gehabt, heute heißt das ‘Human Resources’. Einer, der früher in einer technischen Dienststelle gearbeitet hat, dessen Dienststelle heißt jetzt ‘Customer-Service-Ordering’ – in dem Fall ‘liance’ noch als Beisatz”, so Zangerle.

(We are confronted with the problem that our employees often have to buy a dictionary of economic English so they can understand what is in the letter or notification they have received).

How did I miss this?

All translations are unofficial. They have been prepared with great care, but linguistic compromises had to be made. The reader should also bear in mind that some provisions of these laws will remain unclear without a certain background knowledge of the Austrian legal and political system.
Please note that these laws may be amended in future and check occasionally for updates.

(Übersetzungen nicht offiziell. Werden in Zukunft noch geändert).