Scott Martens in A Fistful of Euros writes about the future needs of clients for big translation companies in Europe:

bq. I work for a medium-sized Belgian translation firm. We have some 200 freelance translators who take work from us and a handful of full-time staff. Our freelancers can and do take work from other sources, what we do is mostly dealing with clients. Like all good middlemen, we make it possible for businesses to negotiate a single price for their translation work and we act as an insurance policy.

…

bq. The ability to charge less for translation, and to invest in technologies that enhance translation productivity and quality, depends quite closely on the size of your firm. As recently as the early 90’s, it was still rare to find pan-European translation firms. The translation market in the EU wasn’t very integrated, and as a result, firms tended to be fairly small. The large, integrated markets – the US and Japan – are monolingual; they don’t do very much translation.

The IPKAT gives a site with links to customs websites all over Europe – EU present and future members – (quoted in connection with an ECJ ruling that France should not stop windscreens passing through France from Spain to Poland, even though these infringe French trademark law).

The page is provided by Langdon Systems, who sell software to handle international customs duties.

Thanks to Sue Young of ITI for passing on the message that Grant and Cutler’s new foreign language dictionary catalogue is online as a PDF, or rather as a number of PDFs. It is dated October 2003. They are not going to issue paper catalogues any longer.

The catalogue has a separate section for Law, and one for (general) German.

They say:

bq. Catalogue entries are not yet linked to our stock and the information is not necessarily current.

Oh well. Grant and Cutler is a foreign language bookshop in London, at 55-57 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7AY, with a mail order service. A number of other catalogues are current, e.g. German books, World Cinema on Video and DVD.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article on a case relating to September 11th that is almost completely secret:

bq. It’s the case that doesn’t exist. Even though two different federal courts have conducted hearings and issued rulings, there has been no public record of any action. No documents are available. No files. No lawyer is allowed to speak about it. Period.
Yet this seemingly phantom case does exist – and is now headed to the US Supreme Court in what could produce a significant test of a question as old as the Star Chamber, abolished in 17th-century England: How far should a policy of total secrecy extend into a system of justice?

Via The Legal Reader

Carob recommends Werner Koczwara, a stand-up comedian (the Germans call them Kabarettisten).

bq. Koczwara is a stand-up act who has discovered the rich vein of comedy inherent in the German legal system. If your German’s fluent it’s well worth going to see him, because he’s very funny and doesn’t just deliver the same old lawyer jokes.

You can get a CD from Koczwara’s site. I was about to say: he might not come to Bavaria, and then I saw his biography: of course I remember the piece Verstrahlter Großvater (radiated grandfather, 1986). It was on the TV satire programme Scheibenwischer (which has just broadcast its final program), and the Bavarian station decided not to broadcast the programme for that reason.

Here’s a description of one of Koczwara’s CDs with translation:

bq. Am achten Tag schuf Gott den Rechtsanwalt. Wissenschaftler haben festgestellt: “In 2 Millionen Jahren gibt es auf der Erde nur noch zwei Lebensformen: Termiten und Rechtsanwälte. Beides enorm nimmersatte Kaliber! Egal, welches der beiden Species Sie befällt, anschließend ist immer das halbe Haus weg.”

bq. On the eighth day, God created lawyers. Scientists have proved: “Two million years from now, there will only be two species left on earth: termites and lawyers. Both of them are insatiable! No matter which of them you are infested by, you always finish up losing half your house.”

Corp Law Blog calls this ‘the most trivial issue ever discussed on Corp Law Blog’. (I hope he doesn’t read this blog!):

The Anthem/WellPoint merger agreement contains much of interest to Corp Law Blog readers. So what’s the first thing I noticed? Read the following introductory paragraph to the agreement and see if you can guess:

AGREEMENT AND PLAN OF MERGER, dated as of October 26, 2003 (this “Agreement”), among Anthem, Inc., an Indiana corporation (“Purchaser”), Anthem Holding Corp., an Indiana corporation and a direct wholly owned subsidiary of Purchaser (“Merger Sub”), and WellPoint Health Networks Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Company”).

The simplistic rule ‘between’ for two parties and ‘among’ for more than two is questioned. Strunk and White:

When more than two things or persons are involved, among is usually called for: “The money was divided among the four players.” When, however, more than two are involved but each is considered individually, between is preferred: “an agreement between the six heirs.”

Corp Law Blog (Mike O’Sullivan) says that wherever parties are to be regarded as distinct, ‘between’ should be used, and when they are treated collectively, ‘among’.