A couple of days ago Enigmatic Mermaid published a photograph headed ‘A Tribute to the Linear Accelerator’. The photo shows a huge thing like an overgrown mobile phone in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Enig says this is what she translates about most of the time. This picture is haunting me. I know other technical translators who have also become experts in some complex program or piece of equipment. Fascinating.
I just received a new dictionary list for 2003/2004 from Kater Verlag. However, the list can be consulted just as well online. Especially for anyone outside Germany, who may not even want to order from Kater Verlag, the great thing about the list online is that you can see a couple of pages of each dictionary. You select the book you are interested in and click on Entscheidungshilfe (decision help). Here should be a two-page spread from the monolingual German police dictionary. I will look here again when the new Gelbrich and Reinwaldt architecture dictionary (Bauwesen) DE>EN appears, and I can see how much it’s changed from the first edition, which I am very pleased with.
Grant and Cutler in London will send a page or two as a fax, however. Another dictionary seller is La Maison du Dictionnaire in France.
Whats the position of treasure trove in German law? Its a bit strange. There are rules in the Civil Code relating to Schatzfund (section 984).
Wird eine Sache, die so lange verborgen gelegen hat, daß der Eigentümer nicht mehr zu ermitteln ist (Schatz), entdeckt und infolge der Entdeckung in Besitz genommen, so wird das Eigentum zur Hälfte von dem Entdecker, zur Hälfte von dem Eigentümer der Sache erworben, in welcher der Schatz verborgen war.
If a thing is discovered which has remained hidden so long that the owner can no longer be ascertained (treasure), and it is taken in to [sic] possession as a result of the discovery, one half of the ownership is acquired by the discoverer, and the other half by the owner of the property in which the treasure was hidden.
The definition here is very broad. It is just necessary for something to have been hidden (as opposed to lost) for it to be treasure trove. I suppose no-one would take legal action if they find a secret chewing gum cache, though. The division into two halves goes back to Emperor Hadrian.
However, this Civil Code section is rarely applied, because there is something in Land law called Schatzregal, and the Länder also have rules governing the kind of treasure that ends up in museums – I suppose because cultural and educational affairs and thus museums are the matter of the Länder.
Schatzregal has nothing to do with bookcases, as I used to think. There are two words Regal in German, with different etymologies. One means a bookcase, and the other means a sovereign right, usually with some economic value, originally a right of the king or local rules and later a right of the state. This word is related to the English adjective regal. The big Muret-Sanders (Langenscheidt) dictionary translates it as regale, regality, royal prerogative, royalty. Walker’s Oxford Companion to Law says that treasure trove belongs ‘by prerogative right’ to the Crown. The OED doesn’t confirm this meaning of regale; it’s just possible that ‘regalities’ would work, but I think ‘prerogative’ is more widely known. Apparently in the 13th-c. Sachsenspiegel, every treasure that lies deeper in the earth than a plough reaches belongs to the king (see a useful review of a book on the topic, in German, with links).
If something is defined as a Kulturdenkmal (historical monument, but this includes movable property), then Land law will govern. It varies in its definitions and in its results. I have the impression that Schatzregal does not apply in Bavaria and that in Länder where it does apply, treasure trove goes to the Land government without compensation.
There’s a discussion of the law of treasure or treasure trove in Britain at an archaeological site here. The problem with law in this area is making it strict enough, but not so strict that no finds are reported. This is a question raised by the Sky Disk. Was the Saxony-Anhalt law too restrictive? The law on this point in Germany varies from Land to Land, in Britain from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Before 1996, treasure trove meant items of gold and silver that had been hidden by an untraceable owner. It belonged to the Crown, but the finder would usually be paid the full value. Coroners, as the officers of the Crown, were responsible in treasure trove disputes and are still responsible for treasure.
According to the article mentioned above, at the Current Archaeology site:
bq. Why then was the English system so successful? The first, and most important aspect is that it is limited – limited only to gold and silver (and now some bronze coins). This means first that it can be policed: the British Museum tries to track down all finds of gold and silver and is remarkably successful in its endeavours; yet this would be quite impossible if they were to try to track down all archaeological finds.
bq. It also means that the vast majority of finds made by archaeologists fall outside the system: and the local archaeological society and independent archaeologist can pursue their investigations without officialdom breathing down their necks (as happens in Scotland: which is one of the reasons why there are few active archaeological societies in Scotland).
The Scottish system is different, and so is the new English system (actually for England and Wales and Northern Ireland) under the http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1996/96024–a.htm#1.
I just learnt a new word – detectorist. Two of the Saxony-Anhalt defendants are detectorists – people who use metal detectors. Here’s a detectorist contract.
(Via Handakte WebLAWg, with German links) The Sky Disc of Nebra may be the world’s oldest chart of the cosmos. It’s every bit as important as Stonehenge, and at the same time a lot more portable.
The disc, unearthed by treasure hunters in Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, in 1999, weighs two kilos and is 32 cm. in diameter. It is embossed with gold stars, sun or full moon, and crescent moon, and two curved shapes that may represent boats, for in the Bronze Age it was thought that the sun travelled from west to east at night in a boat. Originally the bronze was rubbed with rotten egg, which reacted with the bronze to give a deep violet colour. Even green with verdigris as it is now, it is a beautiful object and might be thought a fake. But scientific examinations have proved beyond doubt that it dates from approximately 1600 B.C., 400 years after Stonehenge. The latest research information and pictures can be obtained at this site in Halle (in German). Here are some pictures with an English text.
The disc has led to two proceedings: civil proceedings about marketing rights, and criminal proceedings against the men who found the disc and allegedly illegally removed it from its site (it was recovered only after painstaking police investigation and arrests at the Hilton Hotel in Basle). The criminal proceedings start tomorrow at the Naumburg Amtsgericht, the lowest level of court. The defendants are four men and a woman aged between 21 and 64. The defence is apparently arguing that the disc was found in Bavaria or the Czech Republic, where the law relating to finders is different.
The civil proceedings started at the Magdeburg Landgericht, the higher court of first instance, on August 28th. According to a report in NGZ-online, the case is the first of its kind. The Land Saxony-Anhalt, the owner of the disc,
is suing the town of Querfurt, near Nebra. The mayor of Querfurt had terms including “Himmelsscheibe von Nebra” (Nebra Sky Disc) registered as trade marks so that only Querfurt can use these terms for marketing purposes.
I reported once on the Berlin interpreter trial. Recently it came to an end. On August 28th Richard Schneider reported it. The main defendant, Kemal E., was convicted of 47 cases of professional fraud and sentenced him to four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.
The story can be found in the archives of Richard Schneider’s Nachrichtenportal (news portal) at www.uebersetzer-portal.info. The site uses frames, so I can’t give an exact link.
Richard Schneider does always find interesting news, I presume from direct contacts. On September 5th he cited a small article in BerlinOnline , a note in the Berliner Zeitung by Johannes Gernert, describing some journalists attempting to translate ‘Tony Blair sexed up the report’: ‘Journalisten sind eben doch Übersetzer.’
Meanwhile, someone reminded me that Robin Stocks, at the Bonner Übersetzer- und Dolmetscherforum (Bonn forum for translators and interpreters), runs a weblog with news for and from members. I remember when I was first toying with the idea of starting a weblog looking at Robin’s source code and noticing this.