When I started this blog in April 2003, I didn’t expect it to run for ten years.

Unfortunately, I am in a phase of little blogging, although there is plenty to write about, if I weren’t otherwise occupied.

So what is going on in the law in Germany at the moment?

In case anyone has missed this, a court in Bavaria has been making headlines.

The trial in question, before the Munich Higher Regional court (Oberlandesgericht), is called the NSU-Prozess. NSU is Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (National Socialist Underground), after the right-wing terrorist organization to which the surviving defendant, Beate Zschäpe, belongs. The charge relates to ten racist murders, of which five were committed in Bavaria (memorial to the three who died in Nuremberg) and eight were of Turks. The press originally called them Döner murders and attributed them to inter-Turkish gang warfare. I believe the trial is expected to take a couple of years. It was due to start tomorrow, on April 17.

The court allocated seats to journalists on a first-come first-served basis, and no Turkish journalists were included. The subsequent outcry (some German journalists even offered their places to Turkish journalists, but the court refused this, and it refused to relay the proceedings into a second room) culminated in an application to the Federal Constitutional Court, which found that the seat allocation should be changed (press release in English, in German). Thereupon the court yesterday changed the starting date of the trial from 17 April to 6 May.

Here’s a New York Times article for more.

The change of date is unfortunate for the victims’ families, who had made arrangements to stay in Munich. It might not have been necessary if the court had been prepared to take notice of objections, instead of claiming the moral high ground.

I haven’t had much time lately so to keep something on offer I’d like to refer to some of the best links on my site. I am afraid some of the items on the blogroll are dead, but some aren’t.

For legal translation:

The Centre for German Legal Information calls itself ‘the gateway to German law in English’. I normally use it to find translations of German legislation into English. They aren’t always reliable. On top of this, I believe it is the policy to drop translations of legislation which is no longer current. But we translators often have to translate old statutes! Of course you can’t rely on those translations, but they are worth a look. Some translators refer to the official German site with ‘official’ translations of statutes. But those are all at cgerli anyway. And what is very good, you can click through to search the German names. Sites that expect you to guess the translated name are harder to navigate. Cgerli also has judgments and other materials.

The German Law Journal is also always worth a look. It is published regularly with articles on a variety of areas of German law.

Incidentally,the similar-sounding weblog German American Law Journal has a new post on the Leistungsschutzrecht or ancillary copyright, which will restrict the use of more than snippets online, with a link to an essay, Leistungsschutzrecht for German Print Media — An Ancillary Copyright Protection by Felix Gebhard explaining the bill in English. (I had an entry on the early stages of this last July: Ancillary copyright/Leistungsschutzrecht).

Some of my favourite law blogs from the UK are IPKat, which currently has a very timely report on the third Bundesgerichtshof decision on chocolate rabbits: Bunny dispute: Lindt vs Riegelein – BGH decides again…; ObiterJ, which is always splendid at explaining its topics, as is the UK Criminal Law Blog – the latter has an interesting piece on Who, or what, is a lawyer?

‘Lawyer’ as such is not a protected term. That means that anyone can call themselves that without fear of legal repercussions (it is a criminal offence to pretend to be a Solicitor or Barrister or someone otherwise qualified to conduct reserved activities) – although if you start charging money for it you may find yourself hit with a fraud charge. ‘Lawyer’ as a legal term is not defined anywhere in the Legal Services Act 2007 and therefore there are no restrictions on who can, and can’t, call themselves one.

There are other legal translation blogs around, in particular Juliette Scott’s frequently updated From Words to Deeds: translation & the law, which is a good source not only for conferences and other academic links.

Unfortunately I arrived at this church at just before 2 p.m. on a Sunday, and it was filling up with people coming for the weekly service. I didn’t like to photograph the interior. I suppose if there were no services we would not have these churches. This one, which reminds me a bit of 1980s flats, is called Licht auf unserem Weg (pictures of interior at link). It’s at the lorry drivers’ service station at Geiselwind.

This is the renovated Headley Discovery hide at the London Wetland Centre. Big windows with seats, telescopes and binoculars and CCTV coverage of birds, and books. It’s one of several hides on the site. I don’t think I used the telescopes enough, as I was trying out a new lens on the camera.

The London Wetland Centre was set up from 1995 on a site vacated by Thames Water. It was based on Peter Scott’s idea that rather than building a centre near an existing wetland, one could set up a wetland in a city and the wildlife would come. Hence the large numbers of migrating birds.

It’s very close to central London. You can get a bus from Hammersmith tube station that terminates at the Centre. There are well signposted walks. I went on the South Route and saw quite a few water birds I don’t see in Fürth – wigeon (Pfeifente), shelduck (Brandgans), great crested grebe (Haubentaucher), possibly gadwall (Schnatterenter) and shoveler (Löffelente), and Barnacle geese (Nonnengans). What I didn’t realize was that there are a large number of non-indigenous birds bred and kept at the Centre, on the West Route.

Definitely worth a visit, above all for the opportunity of viewing birds with ideal equipment. The shop has a huge variety of bird feeders and foods, and there is also a specialist shop for telescopes and binoculars.

I gather (from a translators’ mailing list) that the City University Legal Translation MA is to close. (Addition: the current full-time students and the second-year part-time students submitting their dissertations in October 2013 are to be the last intake). What a shame! I have seen some documents about its organization and it must have taken a great deal of planning. I was glad that I did not have to create a new legal translation course when I was in Erlangen – especially one with an interface between translation theory and legal translation! It seems a real waste of organization and knowledge. You can read a lot about the course at the above link, albeit now probably irrelevant.

City’s Legal Translation MA will allow you to acquire a specialisation in an area of translation for which there is an increasing demand.

The course provides an overview of the legal systems and terminology in England and Wales as well as those of the country of your other language.

It establishes a theoretical framework for legal translation and provides practice in translating key documents in a wide range of legal fields.

The curriculum was developed in consultation with the legal translation industry and is tailored to its needs.

Last year the part-time option was scrapped and the course reviewed, apparently with the result that it will be stopped altogether. I wonder what reasons will be given. Probably the part-time option was very attractive and closing that avenue was the beginning of the end.

A similar situation has arisen with the Imperial College Translation Studies Unit, which Imperial College feels does not fit into its programme – presumably with the argument that translation is an art. The course ought to be relocated, they say – but this seems tantamount to closing it.
Here’s a link to a petition against this http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/petition-against-the-transferral-or-closure-of-the-translation-studies-unit:

The Imperial College Management Board has informed us that the activities carried out by the Translation Studies Unit (TSU) are not considered core to the College strategy and that, if possible, the Unit should be transferred to another institution. If this solution proves not to be feasible, consideration will be given to closing the unit by the end of September 2013.

Here’s something about the TSU.

(Click to enlarge, as always)

This is the solution if you are British and missing Alaskan pollock with rémoulade and German chips. No sign of malt vinegar or wally.

Alternatively, you could try to change your tastes.