Poppies from the Shard, 22.10.2014:
At the Shard:
Brick Lane:
Tourism
Reply
Journal of Civil Law Studies
The Journal of Civil Law Studies is a peer-reviewed, online and open-access periodical, published by the Center of Civil Law Studies. LSU Law students participate in the editorial process once papers have been accepted for publication. First published in 2008, it promotes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the civil law in Louisiana and in the world.
The Journal has been going since 2008. You can download the whole issue or individual articles as PDFs. Articles in this issue include ones on Scotland, Spain and Switzerland. News from Switzerland (2012-2014): Major Reform of the Rules on Unfair Competition and of Domestic and International Family Law – also with references to introductions to Swiss law and online English translations of the Codes. Readers will know that you can get lots of official translations of Swiss law online nowadays. The authors of the article tend to use French-language references.
While we’re in Louisiana, remember you can get a Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary by Gregory W. Rome and Stephen Kinsella for Kindle.
via Juris Diversitas
Christiane Hearne: Wörterbuch der Druckluft- und Filtertechnik DE-EN, EN-DE
I knew Christiane Hearne as a contributor to the foreign languages forum on CompuServe, FLEFO, and to the small list run by loyal dregs after FLEFO’s demise. I even visited her
This dictionary is a posthumous one, published by her daughter, I gather from the Kater Verlag newsletter. At Kater Verlag on the page for Wörterbuch der Druckluft- und Filtertechnik you can click on ‘Kater-Scan’ and see some pages of it.
Here’s the Springer page:
Dieses Wörterbuch in Deutsch – Englisch und Englisch – Deutsch umfasst annähernd 12000 Fachbegriffe aus der industriellen Druckluft- und Filtertechnik. Es enthält zahlreiche Begriffserläuterungen je nach fachlichem Kontext sowie viele Anwendungsbeispiele in Form von kompletten Sätzen ausformuliert.
…
Die AutorinChristiane Hearne arbeitete seit 1987 als selbstständige staatlich geprüfte Übersetzerin und Dolmetscherin. Ihr Fachgebiet waren technische Übersetzungen für Firmen aus der Baubranche und dem Ingenieurwesen sowie die Übersetzung technischer Fachbücher.
Content Level » Professional/practitioner
Stichwörter » Abdampfrückstand – Befüllmenge – Druckbehälter – Druckleitung – Druckluftanlage – Einleitungsgrenzwert – Filteranlage – Filteranordnung – Filterbaugruppe – Hilfspumpe – Kondensataufbereitung – Niveauschwimmer – Schwimmerschalter – gewässerbelastend – Ölabscheider
Penalty clauses
It doesn’t seem over ten years since I mentioned penalty clauses.
Now Charlie Bavington, in A Pragmatic Eye, has come up with the problem in an agreement with a French translation company: Oh look, a penalty clause, with links comparing common law and civil law approaches.
A few internet links
While I’m busy, here are some links to other sites:
1. A short video on translating poetry from German to English – tiere zu fragen by Odile Kennel, translated by Anna Crowe, who usually translates from Spanish and Catalan, helped by Katy Derbyshire.
2. John Flood on What is a lawyer? with the help of Dilbert cartoons and linking to Jonathan Goldsmith.
Machines, paralegals, technicians, accountants, consultants even are all engaged in the “practice” of law these days. They may not call themselves lawyers but they do law. The new legal services markets now emerging are signs that the distinctiveness of the lawyer is being eroded.
It might mean that lawyers’ skills are redundant. I think this unlikely. Or it could mean that lawyers’ skills are inadequate to the demands of today’s business and legal markets. If they are inadequate then others invade your turf and take your work. So it’s up to the profession(s) and the academy to (re)produce lawyers/professionals fit for the modern age. And don’t worry about definitions. Hardly anyone cares.
3. Mary Beard on What we get wrong about Lord Elgin (in connection with Amal Clooney’s involvement in trying to get the Elgin Marbles back to Greece).
Now that Amal Clooney has taken up the case, all the old over-simplifications are crawling out again. Personally I hold no brief for Lord Elgin (I have remained uncomfortably “on the fence” on the whole issue for many a year). And it is important to admit that there is an awful lot we dont know about him and his motives (to be honest, it is completely uncertain whether he was looking to save a precious antiquity or looking for some nice decoration for his stately pile, or some combination of the two).
But there are some aspects to the story as it is now told that are simply WRONG.
And here is Jeremy Paxman’s take:
But what would have happened to these sculptures had they stayed in Athens? After all, at the time Lord Elgin helped himself the Parthenon was being used as a fortress. Mary Beard’s excellent short history of the building tells us that for most of the 18th century, Athenians were in the habit of grinding down marble statues to produce lime and used parts of these great classical buildings as rubble for their foundations. Had the ghastly Lord Elgin not plundered his works of arts, they could have ended up in the footings of some kebab stand.
4. Chinese Legal Documents Series (in Chinese and English) (via Chinese Law Prof Blog).
Books on legal writing in English
There are many useful books for lawyers on how to write better legal English. How useful they are for translators is another matter. By all means, if you have time, work through some of the suggestions on legal writing (an internet search for ‘drafting’ is also a good idea). Consider whether you mind whether the book is for British or U.S. or another form of legal English.
But as I suggested in the post on virtual synonyms, when translating into English you can’t simplify at will. Consequently we tend to spend more time researching specific law and language problems than taking the wider view.
As a member of the BDÜ it probably doesn’t behoove me to look at the publications of the BDÜ Fachverlag with as much suspicion as I do, but I’ve never recovered from how a colleague salivated over a book on how to translated GmbH articles into English. The book was a student’s work written for a non-lawyer lecturer and was full of problems. But then, caveat emptor.
The latest book advertised to me is probably not at all bad, in fact it may be good, but is it a book for lawyers on how to write legal English or does it address translators into English too?
I couldn’t trace the LexisNexis edition, but what is that keyboard on the cover telling us? I suppose it is implying that there is a German element.
I am told (my emphasis):
Wenn Sie juristische Texte ins Englische übersetzen, dann kann ich Ihnen die jüngste Neuerscheinung aus dem BDÜ Fachverlag ans Herz legen, den „Legal Writing Coach“ – eine Sammlung von leicht verwendbaren Materialien, die an das begrenzte Zeitbudget von vielbeschäftigten Anwälten und Übersetzern angepasst ist. Der „Legal Writing Coach“ basiert auf der langjährigen internationalen Erfahrung des Autors und bietet eine Fülle von echten Praxisbeispielen und zielt auf die häufigsten Probleme beim Schreiben juristischer Texte ab. Die angebotenen Lösungen lassen sich schnell und einfach umsetzen. Mit diesem Buch können Sie Ihre Fähigkeiten verbessern, gute juristische Texte in englischer Sprache zu verfassen.
You can see the table of contents in a PDF linked to here. I can’t tell what about it is for translators. It does appear that the author is based in Vienna.
It does have an Annex on British and American legal usage and one on slutations, titles, and closings which might be interesting for translators.