Here comes part 2:
Trend 2: Legal terms that have been used for decades become replaced by Anglicisms
Let’s take the matter of control in company law, which in German legal terms used to be named as “Beherrschung”. Twenty years ago, we never had German texts that spoke of “Kontrolle” over a company or that one company “kontrolliert” another company. This has changed, with plenty of German lawyers now using “Kontrolle” and “kontrollieren”. The same is true for the collocation “beyond the control of the parties”, which used to be “außerhalb des Herrschaftsbereichs der Parteien”.
Or take financial reporting: in 2005, there may have been an “Audit” in the IT sector or in environmental matters, but certainly not in accounting. Today, you hear “Audit” and “Auditor” all the times when it comes to financial statements.
But exceptions prove the rule, as shown by the next example. Anyone wishing to add a digital signature to a translation in Germany has to use a service provider who ensures that the signature can be trusted to be correct. And here, against all expectations, the German term for this service provider does not include the English words trust or service. Oh, no. Such a service provider is called a “Vertrauensdiensteanbieter”. Isn’t that lovely? Three components simply thrown together in one word: Vertrauen = trust, Dienste = services, and Anbieter = provider. Would look a bit awkward in English, wouldn’t it? “Trustserviceprovider”.