English Blog

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

We have been providing you with translations of legal and financial texts for more than 20 years. And to mark our anniversary, we naturally asked ourselves whether the language of law has changed during this time. And of course there have been changes. The most important trend is the steady advance of Anglicisms into German

A very tricky thing in German are compounds, which can be quite long as is evident in the photo. And with Frankfurt now buzzing with AMLA, which shortly will move to the Messeturm, we have a very good example of that: “Geldwäscheverdachtsanzeige”. This is (i) a notification of (ii) the suspicion of (iii) the laundering

In my last post, I talked about how German authorities have a “somewhat difficult” relationship with foreign words. This is also true for other areas: In technology, for example, only German laypeople talk about a ‘Computer’ when they mean the calculating machine or a ‘Box’ when they have a HiFi speaker in mind. Experts prefer

German official language always has a somewhat complicated relationship with foreign words. Take, for example, the strange terms that buzz around a German notary’s office: Of course you can say ‘Original’ for an original and call the sheets that come out of the copying machine a ‘Kopie’. But it sounds much more official when an

You may recall that last year, our January donations went towards protecting young savages – or oak trees – in a new forested area under the Wohlleben Urwaldprojekt. Even at the tender age of 120, these oaks – by primeval forest standards – are still rather green, so to speak. Which is why it makes sense to protect them starting

“I never said that English was an easy language” – these words by Mr Webster, a lecturer at the Institute for Translation and Interpreting at Heidelberg University, are etched in my memory for eternity and beyond. He would go on to recite typical pitfalls like “clocks and watches, scholars and scientists”, etc. But Mr Webster

The swedes know it too. In Swedish, tår is a cup of coffee. If you are on your second cup of coffee, you say påtår. And because Swedish people love coffee so much, there is also the tretår – meaning the third cup of coffee, for when your 5-minute coffee break is not so short