I took this clipart image from CLIPS AHOY!

I was searching the Internet to find what to call a medieval mason’s Steinbeil and Steinpickel (axe and pick?) for building Einhard’s basilica at Michelstadt, and came across a history of the gavel. It’s on the site of The Gavel Store (‘the largest and the best selection of gavels in the world’). Apparently they have a masonic past, inter alia.

I must say I know gavels only in the U.S. judge context. I would say an auctioneer has a hammer. But apparently the term gavel can be used for an auctioneer’s hammer too.

You can get gavels, even in the form of earrings, at For Counsel, and a lot of other – er – stuff for lawyers too.

Actually, the gavels on offer for presiding at meetings in the UK sometimes have a slightly different form. There is a gavel shop there too.

The Legal Reader cites an article in The Lawyer (LawyerNews) about image rights – something long recognized by continental European jurisdictions, but not in English law.

Perhaps those who make snide remarks about window boxes would like to see another kind of box. This was photographed a few years ago, so it may have been cleaned up or replaced now.

Via the Universal Language blog, an article in Newhouse News Service entitled ‘English is Language of Business, but Americans Aren’t Fluent’.

bq. On a flight from Tokyo to Bangkok, an Indonesian woman speaking fractured English couldn’t make herself understood to an American flight attendant.
But a Japanese passenger could tell what the Indonesian woman was saying.

One should avoid words with several meanings when speaking international English, for example check/cheque, right, plant, and also phrasal verbs and idioms.

It sounds to me as if we should all learn a form of pidgin to speed up the process.

This is something I worry about when I see a series of books published in Germany, in English, entitled ‘German law accessible’.

Perhaps more sociology than law –

bq. Although there is a great deal of informal griping about the long lines for women’s toilets in many public facilities, there is not that much detailed information. In particular, because men and women rarely compare detailed notes about toilet facilities, there seems to be a tendency on the part of both sexes to assume that an equal number of toilet facilities are available to men and women, but women simply take longer, resulting in longer lines. In fact, however, most older public toilets do not seem to offer anything like equality of opportunity to men and women.

People who go out in a mixed group can do the survey posted at the University of Chicago Law School site. It should be interesting if only just to make the comparison, which we don’t usually do.

Via the blawg review.
I suspect it’s only intended for the USA, but it doesn’t say so.

I have just received the 2003/2004 catalogue of St. Jerome Publishing in the UK. It should all be available at their website (I’m afraid the web address on p. 2 of the catalogue is wrong – it has ac instead of co). St. Jerome is the patron saint of translators, which puzzles some Germans until they are told he is Hieronymus in German. They send books mail order, postage included in Europe.
The catalogue also contains books on translation from other publishing houses, which is nice.
The series I have three of is called Translation Practices Explained and is rather down-to-earth (there is another series called Translation Theories Explained, which I am also interested in). I have:

Enrique Alcaraz and Brian Hughes, Legal Translation Explained
Brian Mossop, Revising and Editing for Translators
and
Emma Wagner, Svend Bech and Jesús M. Martinez, Translating for the European Union Institutions

The rest of the series consists of a book on court interpreting, one on conference interpreting, one on electronic tools for translators (but dated 2001), and one on translating official documents, which is dated July 2003 and which interests me because I am a sworn translator and sometimes do this kind of translating.

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