I recently bought a two-language book called Staats- und Verwaltungsorganisation in Deutschland. The Structure of Government and Administration in Germany, 1997, ISBN 3-931797-12-0.

What might interest some people is that in the same series there is one other German-English book (on the EU), but eight with Russian, six with Polish, four with Czech, three Hungarian, and one each Ukrainian, French, Spanish and Chinese.

Here’s the list, together with two postal addresses with phone numbers for more information. Perhaps they will reveal the ISBNs, because the books can surely be ordered from bookshops.

This is a very obscure book. I bought it because attempts over a few years to find someone who could tell me whether it was worth having had all failed, and it only cost 16 euros. I think this is the first time its ISBN has been revealed on the Internet!

The book is very well done. Not only the English terminology, but the English as a whole is excellent. Of course, it isn’t a barrel of laughs. The main reason why a person interested in this might not buy it would be that the vocabulary in it might be familiar from elsewhere. For instance, there is a Terminological Series issued by the German Foreign Office with a volume called German Institutions, which is a 1990 glossary containing the names of all the German ministries in up to ten languages. The translations used there are used here too.

The book says it is part of the Manual of International Legal and Administrative Terminology. The German version is ‘largely based on the textbook A 6 “Staatsrecht” by Gerhard Brunner and Frank Höfer.’ It was translated into English by Rhodes Barrett, who did a very good job. But his translation was reviewed by Dr. iur. Magnus G.W.Staak, Kronshagen/Kiel. The terminology was compiled by the Federal Academy for Public Administration (Bundesakademie für öffentliche Verwaltung). Does that mean just the German terminology? There is a bilingual glossary of 259 terms at the back. The whole thing is published by two institutions in Bonn and two in Munich. One of the latter is the Bayerische Verwaltungsschule (Bavarian School of Administration). Continue reading →

A Fistful of Euros is a new blog that describes itself like this:

bq. This is the blog you want for creative, English-language coverage of European affairs.

One of the first entries is about the EU style recommendation that we should write (say) ‘one Euro, two Euro’ in English, whereas it seems more natural to write ‘one euro, two euros’. There was some discussion about this a long time ago on translators’ lists and I am definitely in the ‘euros’ camp, although in formal texts I write ‘EUR 2.00’.

The article quotes Michael Everson in Ireland in a radio interview:

bq. I am on a bit of a crusade about this because we’re having … we’re facing a sociolinguistic disaster right now, I mean, it’s almost class-ridden, you know? You’ve got ordinary folk on Thomas Street and Camden Street saying “euros and cents”, quite happily. And then you’ve got, you know — I don’t know who they are, whether it’s they’re better educated or they’re just Dublin 4 or what, you know, and they’re being very careful to say “euro and cent”. And there’s a reason for all of this, and I guess I’m going to have to point my finger at Mr McCreevy because he’s at the top of the heap…. But whether or not he took any decisions or was just badly informed, I don’t know. Now there’s two pieces of legislation which are, sort of, relevant there. One is a European Council Directive from 1997 — number 1103/97 — which says that, basically, OK, “we consider that the name of the single currency has to be the same in all the official languages of the Union.”

Read the article for more detail, and the comments. It also quotes the EU English Style Guide, which is produced by the English units of the Commission’s translation service:

bq. Guidelines on the use of the euro, issued via the Secretariat-General, state that the plurals of both ‘euro’ and ‘cent’ are to be written without ‘s’ in English. Do this when amending or referring to legal texts that themselves observe this rule. Elsewhere, and especially in documents intended for the general public, use the natural plural with ‘s’ for both terms.

(From languagehat).

Boing Boing links to Bad Toon Rising, which describes itself as follows:

bq. Bad Toon Rising is a collection of drawings of well-known cartoon characters produced by amateur artists entirely from memory and without any reference materials whatsoever.

A lot of them are much easier to recognize than the Pink Panther above.

Via Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites, on August 19th, a blog about autopsies, Autopsy Report, by a medical examiner intern. Looks like a good read. That in turn has a link to the Virtual Autopsy site.

Handakte WebLAWg quotes the Kurier reporting that the people’s advocates are getting more work, or at least were in 2002, as the result of a TV series about them. The Volksanwalt (Hausmaninger in The Austrian Legal System – ISBN 3-214-00239-2 – calls them People’s Advocates) is a kind of ombudsperson introduced in 1977. Ombudsmen or ombudspersons act as intermediaries between the public and the administration. There are three Volksanwälte, one from each of the three strongest parties in parliament; they serve for six years and can be reelected once. The Volksanwaltschaft/People’s Advocates’ Office is a federal office intended to help the legislature supervise the administration. About one-third of last year’s complaints from citizens were outside their jurisdiction, however.
There isn’t anything quite like this in Germany. Some Länder have Bürgerbeauftragte: Rhineland-Palatine has had one since 1974 (German); and there is a Petitionsausschuss (German), a committee on public petitions to which people can apply on federal level.

For any language enthusiasts who have read this far, there is a Volksanwaltschaft in Südtirol / South Tyrol too, and there is a website giving the details in German, Italian and Ladin. I heard of a child in South Tyrol who spoke Ladin at home, German at kindergarten and Italian everywhere else. Here is what is apparently a Ladin news site (but I’m open to correction here).

Slightly off topic, but now it is lawful in the Netherlands to buy small amounts of cannabis for medicinal purposes, perhaps some light should be cast on the difficulty of getting superior tomatoes – at least in Britain. The Independent reported on August 19th. I think things are slightly better in Germany, though I recall that manufactum sometimes sells potatoes ‘for cooking only’ that are clearly seed potatoes of a variety of obscure types.
Here is a photo of some nice tomatoes in an Italian supermarket.