Transblawg

5. September 2007 — Mobbing is another topic I've discussed before (here and here). This is a word that English speakers regard as a German invention and German speakers regard as an English invention. It did in fact start in English, but it was very widely taken over in German in a slightly different sense. A…

1. September 2007 — A comment by Cheryl Stephens (Plain Language Wizardry) under the last entry recommends a multilingual legal glossary at Vancouver Community College. Unfortunately this has no German. It offers plain-language definitions of 5000 terms in Canadian law, translated into Chinese (traditional or si…

29. August 2007 — In der BBC-Sendung The Apprentice (etwa: In der Lehre) bewerben sich sechzehn Lehrlinge um eine Arbeitsstelle bei Sir Alan Sugar. Jede Woche wird einer von ihnen aus der Sendung hinausgeworfen im Stil einer Kündigung (The Scotsman): The Apprentice, shown on the BBC, sees 16 contestants comp…

25. August 2007 — I have translated a couple of things on transsexuals this year - I found Wikipedia helpful for vocabulary - so I was interested to see Joey DiGuglielmo in the Washington Blade Blog responding to criticisms of supposedly offensive terminology. The Washington Blade had reported on a man who u…

16. August 2007 — For a long time in English we've spoken of a person wearing two hats if they combined two functions. Probably the expression wearing a double hat is not completely new, but most of the ghits are very recent. It usually refers to a future position in the EU and it looks as if Tony Blair made i…

13. August 2007 — Legislative drafting in plain English is the topic of Clarity for May 2006 (PDF file), the latest online issue. (Shallower link for Clarity the organization) I have been busy so I offer this for further reading, but I haven't read much of it myself. This is a report on a workshop at the 2…

27. Juli 2007 — Register office is the official term, as I opined in a comment in an earlier entry. I don't really have a problem with registry office, but some people clearly do - so watch out, translators into English! John Bolch's rant in Family Lore. His smug post today on a petition that was rejected …

26. Juli 2007 — The Scotsman reports: A WEALTHY businessman was “deluded and insane” when he turned his back on his family and left his £8 million fortune to the Conservative Party, a court heard yesterday. Branislav Kostic removed his only son from his will after stating that Margaret Thatcher was “…

3. Juli 2007 — In an old entry, life in translation mentions the problem of keeping -or and -ee apart, for example, writing lessor instead of lessee. It's surprisingly easy to confuse parties in documents, and lawyers do it as well as translators. Then there are difficult words like mortgagor (Hypothekens…

19. Juni 2007 — Here's an entry I never got round to publishing, because I didn't get round to investigating the German situation. Under the heading Taking no shit from judges, Mark Liberman at Language Log recently took up the topic of how judges express themselves when they need to quote words like shit an…

10. Juni 2007 — Piggy Bankrupt blogs about how he became bankrupt and how you can survive bankruptcy. You can even ask him questions, although he may not be thinking of the questions of EN>DE translators. Bankruptcy happened to me in early 2006 and in an effort to share my experience I’ve since decided …

2. Juni 2007 — Professor Ulrich Noack's blog Unternehmensrechtliche Notizen has frequent and interesting posts. Today he posts a link to an English PDF file, intended to introduce people who don't read German to the current situation in German corporate law (87 pages). Germany's Corporate and Financial La…

21. Mai 2007 — I've been meaning to post this for some time, as it was new to me. Now Lynne Murphy (?) has written about it in separated by a common language. She says that the British use the term peanuts only for the shelled variety, and monkey nuts for those in shell (her picture is borrowed from yak). …

20. Mai 2007 — In the Bremer Sprachblog, Anatol Stefanowitsch has an entry on the use of Schadenfreude in English - the British and Americans claim, he says, that the feeling is unknown in English, which doesn't have a word for it, but of course Germans do. There's also the suggestion 'English doesn't have …

9. Mai 2007 — The translation of forms of business association is quite complex and takes so long to discuss that the steam goes out of the boiler before the discussion has got off the ground. I met some U.S. translators briefly last Friday, but not too briefly for one of them to tell me that all the U.S…

4. Mai 2007 — You may not recognize him, but he’s been looking out for you. Habeas Corpus has never had a very high profile, but for more than 700 years this quiet hero has stood watch over some basic principles of fairness and human dignity. When the Constitution was written, he was there. Since 121…

30. April 2007 — No, not judges again, but the Richter scale. Following a small earthquake in Kent, John Wells points out that we usually pronounce Richter wrong: Saturday’s minor earthquake in Kent meant that the newsreaders made several references to the Richter scale. As usual, they mostly pronounced i…

28. April 2007 — I see that today the Dutch Queen's Day is being celebrated on the South Bank, so time to mention the presentation at the ITI conference on unclogged English last weekend. Dr. Joy Burrough-Boenisch has spent many years editing scientific English written by native speakers of Dutch. Her book is…

17. April 2007 — It was exciting to read that Mark Liberman of Language Log did not know the word conclusory. I have to admit that it's used in American law more than English, but I did know the meaning when I encountered it. Entries by Mark here and here, and by Steve at languagehat here. I did find it adequ…

11. April 2007 — I found a reference yesterday that suggested Tony Blair reduced the age of criminal responsibility in the UK from 14 to 10 (14 is the age in Germany and 10 in England and Wales). Anyone who remembers the two eleven-year-old boys in Liverpool convicted of the murder of a toddler will know the …

3. April 2007 — Names and sources omitted to protect the guilty. 1. The legal system in Germany is continental law, and the legal system in Britain is Anglo-Saxon law. 2. Common Law ist Gewohnheitsrecht. 3. Common law is not written law. 4. The United Kingdom has no constitution. 5. Der Engländer ist e…

6. März 2007 — Radio National in Australia has a programme called LinguaFranca. A language or linguistics topic is discussed for 15 minutes once a week. This week, Australian barristers begin to discuss legal terms relating to Guantanamo. This relates to the situation of David Hicks, an Australian detainee in…

13. Februar 2007 — This is a 2004 story, but you can still see a picture of the famous Escondido Library Cat (L.C.) there. VISTA – Jurors found Friday that a disabled man's civil rights were not violated when his assistance dog was attacked by the Escondido library's pet cat. The jury refused to award him…

1. Februar 2007 — Wikipedia has an entry headed Final good, which subsumes all kinds of things as goods. For example, the public good and private good are listed as types of goods. I am in a quandary. I don't feel like correcting the article, because it is about economics terms and not language. I also feel th…

31. Januar 2007 — Parties to civil proceedings in England: Up to 1999: plaintiff and defendant (divorce: petitioner and respondent) A claimant included a person claiming some benefit, for instance unemployment benefit. From 1999 (Civil Procedure Rules) claimant and defendant (divorce: petitioner and re…