While I’m on the subject of French, thanks to Rainer Langenhan (Handakte WebLAWg) for emailing me the URL of a Canadian translation site, Word Wizards.

Most of the tools introduced would be of interest to French>legal glossary of federal statutes. This would be an excellent source for those weird Canadian civil law – common law translations that don’t work anywhere else (en droit et en équité, I found).

While I’m on the subject of French, thanks to Rainer Langenhan (Handakte WebLAWg) for emailing me the URL of a Canadian translation site, Word Wizards.

Most of the tools introduced would be of interest to French>legal glossary of federal statutes. This would be an excellent source for those weird Canadian civil law – common law translations that don’t work anywhere else (en droit et en équité, I found).

The legal Internet project at Saarbrücken University, my usual portal for German law, has a weekly recommended link (and it’s worth looking through the archives). The current one is a French portal, LexInter.net. I’m not an expert on French legal Internet sites, but this looks useful. It has statutes and codes, annotated and with Internet links. The repertoire de jurisprudence (that’s case law, isn’t it?) has a key word search. There’s also a guide thématique to French law, and bibliographies.

I had to enlarge the font size in IE6.

The legal Internet project at Saarbrücken University, my usual portal for German law, has a weekly recommended link (and it’s worth looking through the archives). The current one is a French portal, LexInter.net. I’m not an expert on French legal Internet sites, but this looks useful. It has statutes and codes, annotated and with Internet links. The repertoire de jurisprudence (that’s case law, isn’t it?) has a key word search. There’s also a guide thématique to French law, and bibliographies.

I had to enlarge the font size in IE6.

An article in the (Maltese) Independent Online throws more light on the translation problems in the version of the EU draft constitution, although it still does not reveal the precise meaning of the incorrect words.

Apparently the translators were told to translate ‘word for word’, in order to avoid the ‘comprehension problems’ that might arise if they used idiomatic Maltese:

bq. This explains why an expression such as “the inhabitants of Europe arriving in successive waves” was translated as “l-habitanti (sic)…waslu f’mewg ta’ success,” …

Apparently, Latvia established a translation institution, which also acted as a monitor of quality.

Allegedly, a number of those who translated into Maltese had never written Maltese before, although they could speak it. Malta did not have enough funding for this.

According to the Ethnologue, there were 300,000 speakers of Maltese in Malta in 1975, and:

bq. It is descended from Maghrebi Arabic but has borrowed heavily from Italian; it is a separately developed form with different syntax and phonology. No diglossia with Standard Arabic. Not endangered. National language. Grammar. Roman script. Bible 1932-1984.

An article in the (Maltese) Independent Online throws more light on the translation problems in the version of the EU draft constitution, although it still does not reveal the precise meaning of the incorrect words.

Apparently the translators were told to translate ‘word for word’, in order to avoid the ‘comprehension problems’ that might arise if they used idiomatic Maltese:

bq. This explains why an expression such as “the inhabitants of Europe arriving in successive waves” was translated as “l-habitanti (sic)…waslu f’mewg ta’ success,” …

Apparently, Latvia established a translation institution, which also acted as a monitor of quality.

Allegedly, a number of those who translated into Maltese had never written Maltese before, although they could speak it. Malta did not have enough funding for this.

According to the Ethnologue, there were 300,000 speakers of Maltese in Malta in 1975, and:

bq. It is descended from Maghrebi Arabic but has borrowed heavily from Italian; it is a separately developed form with different syntax and phonology. No diglossia with Standard Arabic. Not endangered. National language. Grammar. Roman script. Bible 1932-1984.