This isn’t Father Christmas, but a man inspecting a fake chimney concealing a mobile phone mast (see the large rectangular vertical pipe on the right next to the drainpipe). When I first saw these chimneys, I assumed they were meant to stop people complaining about the effects on their children’s brains.

However, I read recently that in areas with listed buildings, permission will be given only if the masts are disguised. I’m not sure whether to believe this. Here’s an article in German with more pictures, including this very building (scroll down to Suchbild), and here is a BBC news report in English.

bq. Dotted around Britain are fake chimney pots, fake flagpoles, fake drainpipes and fake signs all made of glass-reinforced plastic and concealing mobile antennas.

However, Fürth does have over 2000 listed buildings (some marked in red on the plan below).

(Click on all pictures to enlarge).

In July I mentioned Peter Griffin’s bilingual version of a novel – Tocats pel foc – Touched by Fire – by Manuel de Pedrolo.

Peter was obliged to buy it back from the publisher to stop it getting pulped. I can now post the following:

TRANSLATOR RANSOMS 490 COPIES FROM PUBLISHER,
GETS P.O. BOX AND SELLER’S PERMIT, SLASHES PRICE!

More details here.

The price is now $15 (within the USA, I suppose), plus sales tax in California.

ADDED LATER: The price of $15 including postage applies outside the USA too.

The Justizvergütungs- und -entschädigungsgesetz (JVEG), the Court Payment and Reimbursement Act, soon to be passed, will govern the payment of expert witnesses, interpreters and translators and the reimbursement of lay judges and expert witnesses. It’s an important topic but one I probably don’t know enough about – it doesn’t affect me directly (except on the rare occasions when a court asks me to supply a certified translation). See earlier entries here and here.

I believe the lawyers and expert witnesses are happier with the latest draft than the translators and interpreters are. The draft is available at www.bmj.bund.de: here is the press release of August 28th.

All this material is in German, but it isn’t of direct interest to anyone who doesn’t speak German. Now the BDÜ, the Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer e.V., with over 5,000 members, also on behalf of other translators’ associations in Germany: ADÜ Nord Assoziierte Dolmetscher und Übersetzer in Norddeutschland e.V.,
Hamburg,
ATICOM – Fachverband der Berufsübersetzer und Berufsdolmetscher e.V., Hattingen,
VVU Verband der allgemein beeidigten Verhandlungsdolmetscher und der öffentlich bestellten und beeidigten Urkundenübersetzer in Baden-Württemberg e.V., Stuttgart,
VbDÜ Verein öffentlich bestellter und beeidigter Dolmetscher und Übersetzer Bayern
e.V., München, and
Verein beeidigter Dolmetscher und Übersetzer Leipzig e.V., Leipzig,

together with about 2,000 members,
has put its comments on the latest draft online.

Although the draft is an improvement in some respects on the last, there are a large number of problems outstanding, such as the rate paid to interpreters (equivalent to the second-lowest rate for expert witnesses) and the payment per line to translators (EUR 1.25 at minimum, and the usual maximum of EUR 1.85 is not merely for ‘more difficult’ translations, but for ‘considerably more difficult’ ones. The previous payment of EUR 2 per page has gone (a strange old-fashioned kind of payment presuming a chancellery setting). Computer counting including spaces is to be accepted, but not in the case of Cyrillic and Greek font, although it is no secret that Cyrillic and Greek fonts can be counted too.

Another problem is the reference to how translators are paid if they come from a company (Unternehmung), since certified translators are individuals on the courts’ list, and many courts instead go straight to translation companies instead of looking for a certified translator. This is a big topic. Again, the draft assumes that there are circumstances when work for police will not be governed by the Act. And there are strict regulations reducing the income of interpreters: one of these is that if a job is cancelled at short notice, the interpreter will be paid for a maximum of one hour. Interpreters normally charge by the day, and they normally require a day’s payment for short-term cancellation, because they cannot get alternative work at short notice.

The new Act purports to treat interpreters and translators as professionals, to be paid for their services (the old Act had ‘Entschädigung’ – reimbursement – where the new draft has ‘Vergütung’ – payment). The BDÜ objects that it does not go far enough in treating translators and interpreters as professionals.

Language log reports a post by Victor Dewsbery on EDline about the prescribed use of ‘Euros’ instead of ‘euros’ within the EU (see my earlier entry). Language Log points out:

bq. Curiously, the morphology of other languages is not similarly defied: the French and Spanish get an ‘s’, the Finns get a singular partitive ‘a’, etc.

I ‘know’ Victor Dewsbery, a British DE>EN translator in Berlin, from other lists. I did not know of

Victor writes on EDline that the EU style guide has now changed its line, although it still links back to the earlier URL:

bq. Now it seems that somebody has seen the light.
The current style guide of the translation service at http://europa.eu.int/comm/translation/writing/style_guides/english/frame_ind
ex_en.htm (You may need to join the lines of this URL) unashamedly uses “euros”, without so much as a whisper of apology:
“Always use figures with units of measurement denoted by symbols or
abbreviations:
– EUR 50 or fifty euros”

Here’s a page with the new line.

And here’s a note on EDline:

bq. EDline provides the opportunity for online discussion of matters editorial and editorial business, and to provide prompt answers to vexing questions. At some stage everyone working with words has a question to which they cannot readily find the answer; EDline is the forum for posing that question.

Stephan Handschug, Einführung in das kanadische Recht (ISBN 3 406 50826 X), has just appeared in C.H.Beck Verlag. I haven’t read it but have skimmed it. This is what I have noticed so far:

Chapters on fundamentals, the constitution, the courts, the Quebec legal system, legal training, lawyers / judges, and new developments.

This material covers 108 pages. There are also over 30 pages of constitutional documents, a chronological table, and other tables (distribution of seats in parliament, and prime ministers). There seems a slight bias towards political issues. No substantive law. One might contrast this with Mathias Reimann’s Einführung in das US-amerikanische Privatrecht (ISBN 3 406 41670 5), which is much fuller and is 340 pages in length – but thin paper, whereas this Canadian law book is printed on thickish paper.

I had the impression some of the brief materials on common law, equity and the system of precedent were both too brief to be useful and also covered familiar ground, but then, perhaps someone would read this book with no knowledge of the common law and would need an introduction. And there is reference to the royal prerogative and parliamentary sovereignty, which might not be familiar to those who have concentrated on US law.

At a glance, or two glances, I did not see anything on the distinction between federal law and the law of the provinces. Presumably the situation is like that in the United States, where each state has its own criminal and civil law, unlike that in Germany – after all, Quebec has its own law. This may well be in the long and obviously important chapter on the (1982) constitution – I remember Canada being late to get a constitution, so obviously one must buckle down and read this. I was excited to read about the Nunavut territory, which has existed only since April 1st 1999, has an area of 1,994,000 km² and only 26,750 inhabitants.

Note an Overview of Sources of Canadian Law on the Web, and other materials, at LLRX.com.

In England and Wales (and I suppose the rest of the UK), the legal year starts on October 1st. Here are the term dates for 2003-2004:

Michaelmas 1 October 2003 – 19 December 2003
Hilary 12 January 2004 – 7 April 2004
Easter 20 April 2004 – 28 May 2004
Trinity 8 June 2004 – 30 July 2004

Between the terms there are court vacations (yes, the same term the Americans use for ‘holiday’).

The start of the legal year is marked by the Lord Chancellor’s breakfast. The judges used to walk 2 miles from Temple Bar to Westminster Abbey, but now they go by car. There is a 45-minute religious service at 11.30. The following ‘breakfast’ is so called because they used to fast beforehand. The judges have always dressed up in full rig. Many of them have ceremonial dress as well as everyday dress; for instance, full-bottomed wigs (Allongeperücken) are only worn on occasions like this). I have always wanted to stand at the pavement with my camera on this occasion. A BBC news report gives some impression of the usual get-up and the plain morning dress chosen by Lord Falconer this year, with photos of Lord Falconer and Lord Irvine on this occasion.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

bq. The lord chancellor is one of Britain’s most elaborately costumed officials, but Falconer’s predecessor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, also sometimes dispensed with some of the job’s more antiquated trappings.
He appealed successfully to be allowed to wear ordinary trousers, rather than tights and breeches, in Parliament. And he ended the tradition of walking backward before the monarch at the state opening of Parliament.

(Via UK Criminal Justice Weblog)