The International Association of Forensic Linguists, of which I am a member, describes itself as follows:

bq. The International Association of Forensic Linguists (IAFL) is an organization which primarily consists of linguists whose work involves them in the law. Narrowly defined, this means linguistic evidence in court (authorship attribution, disputed confessions etc.), but in fact the association aims to bring together those working on any aspects of language and the law (see the non-IAFL list on the Birmingham FL Home Page). While full membership is open to linguists, the association welcomes others, particularly members of the legal profession, as student members.

There is a lot of interest in courtroom language, which can be useful, although probably more for interpreters than translators. The site has a categorized bibliography and a link to the Journal, with synopses of articles. The Webster site has links too.

Ruth Morris has written about translation problems in court (I didn’t realize she started off by studying French and German at Bradford and becoming an EC interpreter). Her website is still under construction (since 1997, it appears!) but has a short biography and links to two interesting articles: Interpreters and the legal process and Justice for non-English speakers. She has also published a book, with the magistrate Joan Colin, called Interpreters and the Legal Process (ISBN 1 872 870 28 7).

Incidentally, John Gibbons published a book called Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System in 2002 – I know nothing about it!

This is not intended to be an exhaustive entry, but I will finish by mentioning Peter Tiersma‘s very readable and useful book Legal Language, now available in paperback. He’s also written a Frisian Reference Grammar – there are sound examples on his website, including the famous one:

bûter, brea, en griene tsiis, wa’t dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries
“butter, bread, and green cheese, whoever cannot say that is no upright Frisian”

I remember when I was studying German at London University hearing a lecture on the topic ‘Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Friese’.

Tiersma too has a page of language and law links.

Audiolex analyse tape recordings. And here is a copy of their newsletter Forensically Speaking – don’t know if this 2000 one was the first and last. They quote some unexpected uses of forensic linguistics:

bq. + a sheepdog, identified by its bark (a very old New Zealand case)
+ investigations into glottalalia (speaking in tongues) and a “medieval ghost” who sent messages via computer
+ a trademark case in which the differing pronunciations (American and Australian) of the word “mobile” became an issue
+ does “Yes” mean “Yes, I agree that what you are asking me is correct” or “Yes I understand you” or “Yes I understand you are asking me a question” or “No, but it would not be polite or respectful of me to say so”?
+ determining the order in which gunshots were fired
+ in the determination of Australian aboriginal land rights claims, based on their traditional relationship with the land, as indicated by the language they speak
insights into relationships provided in some languages by the use of honorifics and formal/informal distinctions
+ study of aircraft “black box” recordings
+ in a dialect of English where “kill” may simply mean “hit”, when a suspect says “I killed him”, to what is he actually confessing?

I was chugging along towards the end of a translation of a decision of the Cologne Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court of Appeal) when I hit on a new word to me: Partikularinsolvenzverfahren (territorial insolvency proceedings). This could be a Word of the Day, I thought to myself. It isn’t a difficult one because it comes straight from an EU regulation. It means insolvency proceedings relating to a specified territory that can be held parallel to the main insolvency proceedings.

But not long afterwards, I was broadsided by something much weirder (to me): als Minus enthalten. Here’s the passage:

bq. Einer Stellungnahme des Senats zu diesem Meinungsstreit bedarf es an dieser Stelle jedoch nicht, da der Schuldner einen Hilfsantrag auf Eröffnung eines isolierten Partikular-insolvenzverfahrens über sein inländisches Vermögen nicht gestellt hat. Er kann auch nicht als in dem Antrag der Schuldnerin als Minus mit enthalten angesehen werden, da wegen der Verschiedenheit beider Verfahrensgegenstände nicht ohne weiteres davon ausgegangen werden kann, dass der Antragsteller die Durchführung eines isolierten Partikularinsolvenzverfahrens anstrebt für den Fall, dass sein Antrag auf Eröffnung eines Gesamtinsolvenzverfahrens zurückgewiesen wird.

(OLG Köln 2 W 82/01, April 23, 2001; bold by me. SchuldnerIN is a mistake in the original, of course: this was a man, a sole trader)

A bit of Googling revealed several examples in legal texts. I concluded it was similar to the situation in English criminal law of a lesser included offence. For example, if you indict someone for murder, they can always be convicted of manslaughter, a lesser included offence, whereas in other cases, two or three possible offences have to be charged separately, because they are not included. I therefore decided to translate it as lesser included petition:

bq. Nor can such a petition be seen as having been included in the petition as a lesser included petition, since the subjects of the two proceedings differ and it cannot therefore be automatically assumed that the petitioner wishes separate territorial insolvency proceedings to be held if his petition for the commencement of main insolvency proceedings is dismissed.

The only source I could think of for more information on this was a student’s book on criminal law, but I haven’t succeeded in tracing it in the index of anything I have on substantive or procedural criminal law. Thank goodness for Internet search engines: they give enough examples to construct a definition from. I like my attempt because it is both legal terminology and comprehensible, but am open to further suggestions.

Off topic, and it doesn’t behove me to make light remarks about a hurricane that isn’t going to affect me, but here it is anyway:

The ethicalEsq? law blog has some hurricane haiku:

bq. they call it
a driving rain, but
we better not drive
[haikuEsq]

and the Unofficial Dave Barry Blog repeats some hurricane advice originally printed in the Miami Herald (for South Florida):

bq. STEP 1. Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at least three days.
STEP 2. Put these supplies into your car.
STEP 3. Drive to Nebraska and remain there until Halloween.
Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this sensible plan. Most people will foolishly stay here in South Florida. If you’re one of those people, you’ll want to clip out the following useful hurricane information and tuck it away in a safe place so that later on, when a storm is brewing, you will not be able to locate it.

But for real advice he recommends the Miami Herald storm site.

Hurricane Isabel has already had consequences in criminal law:

bq. PORT ST. LUCIE — With Hurricane Isabel churning in the west Atlantic on Sunday, a 70-year-old woman allegedly hurled a knife at her husband because he watched football instead of preparing for the storm, police said Monday.

He wanted to watch a football game, she wanted him to prepare for the hurricane. Robert M. Harris finished up with a large laceration to his leg, and Joan W. Harris was being held in the St. Lucie County jail.

From Bag & Baggage: a Dutch law firm has started a blog, claiming to be the first European law firm to do so. Also linking to a Dutch chocolate page, Denise says, ‘Yet another reason to learn Dutch’. Hasn’t she heard about Belgian chocolate? But I do remember being taken to try cherries in liqueur and chocolate in Amsterdam, with the stalks still on.

I tried to learn Dutch at evening classes two years ago. I only went for the pronunciation, but it was a very frustrating experience. If you know German, Dutch is so easy, but being asked to tell a story and realizing every word you were saying was pidgin was quite irritating. Isabella Massardo recently mentioned a vocabulary book for learners of Dutch as a second language, i.e. immigrants, that looks really useful for speakers of German and probably English too.

I’m fascinated by the lengths to which U.S. publishers sometimes go to ‘localize’ British novels, and I gather it happens the other way round too.
There is a very interesting paper written in English by a German, Helge Nowak, on the changes demanded of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, not my favourite novel but one that was very successful. Nowak looks at every possible aspect of difference between U.S. and British versions, including dustjacket and typography.

Here is just one example of a change. British version:

he saw himself as a failure and felt vaguely responsible for this.
He was a small man, with very soft, startling black hair and small regular features. Val called him Mole, which he disliked. He had never told her so.

U.S. version:

he saw himself as a failure and felt vaguely responsible for this. He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in these difficult days, into a smile of amused friendliness and pleasure which aroused feelings of warmth, and something more, in many women. He was generally unaware of these feelings, since he paid little attention to what pe/ple thought about him, which was part of his attraction. Val called him Mole, which he disliked. He had never told her so.

I was reminded of this by a recent Guardian article about American publishers nearly retitling the British novel Brick Lane – they wanted it to be called Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers (however, this was the title originally used by the author, Monica Ali).

There are many Internet sites with B.E./Am.E. wordlists, but they have a tendency to be over-simplified and suggest A is always used in AmE and B always in BE and never the twain shall meet.