Trend 5: The “Konjunktiv” is being used increasingly rarely to express indirect or reported speech Nowadays, most Germans would not see any problem in the following sentence: „Der Vorsitzende der Gesellschaft hat mitgeteilt, dass er nicht plant, an der Versammlung teilzunehmen.“ This is somehow surprising, as the Duden, which is, in terms of authority, a […]
HAVE THERE BEEN ANY CHANGES IN GERMAN LEGALESE V? Read More »
Trend 4: The definite article is omitted more often than in the past. As late as 2000, the style guide of a then quite conservative German “Anwaltskanzlei” that was on its way to becoming an international law firm specified that company names should have the definite article in the genitive case – e.g. “Die Webposts
HAVE THERE BEEN ANY CHANGES IN GERMAN LEGALESE IV? Read More »
Trend 3: More prepositions, fewer datives: Whereas in the past the German verb “haften” – which means to be liable – had to be followed by the dative case, nowadays collocations of the type “haften gegenüber” – literally speaking to be liable to, towards or vis-à-vis somebody – are used more frequently: “Der Verkäufer haftet
HAVE THERE BEEN ANY CHANGES IN GERMAN LEGALESE III? Read More »
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
HAVE THERE BEEN ANY CHANGES IN GERMAN LEGALESE II? Read More »
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
Have there been any changes in German legalese? Read More »
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
WASSERSCHUTZPOLIZEISTATION Read More »
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
ABSCHRIFT FROM THE URSCHRIFT II Read More »
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
ABSCHRIFT FROM AN URSCHRIFT? Read More »
I’m sure you remember the conversation between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Selenskyi in the Oval Office. The Ukrainian president appeared without an interpreter, although English is not his mother tongue. Could the scandal have been avoided if an interpreter had been present, perhaps to act as a buffer? Not necessarily, and for a very simple
WOULD IT HAVE BEEN ANY DIFFERENT WITH AN INTERPRETER? PART 2 Read More »
We’ve probably all seen the recent catastrophic meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Selenskyi. Even though the Ukrainian president isn’t a native speaker of English, he didn’t make use of an interpreter, so the two weren’t playing on a level field from the very start. Would the conversation have gone differently if President Selenskyi had
Would things have gone differently with an interpreter? Read More »
