As you may know, Google Scholar allows you to search for US legal opinions (as well as patents and international journal articles).
Recently, the presentation of search results has been changed to show the extent of discussion of cited cases.
Whilst translators can use this to collect relevant reference documents, lawyers may use it to evaluate the weight of the adverse party’s arguments.
Earlier this month, the French Ministry of Justice launched a new series called Femmes de droit through their website. The first woman to be interviewed was Sylvie Monjean-Decaudin, a legal translator of Spanish to French and university professor teaching international commercial law and trade in Spain and Latin America to linguists, as well as legal translation, at Cergy-Pontoise near Paris.
You can listen to the interview (in French) here, and also download a transcript if you prefer to read it.
Monjean-Decaudin was also a speaker at a conference on legal translation held in Lyon in 2010, the video proceedings of which (in French) can be accessed here.
The Ministry website also offers a wide selection of profiles of individuals in the French legal system, from judges to clerks, that you can access here.
This post is the second in a series I have called “What exactly is…”, the first of which examined the burgeoning subject of forensic linguistics.
The topic of lawyer-linguists has been interesting me for quite some time now, and popped up again recently on Twitter with a flurry of job offers from the European Central Bank for several languages.
Although this job title seems to be relatively new, you can see a very early lawyer-linguist on the right – Cicero…
Just thought I would post a list of resources from posts up to now, for those who might have missed something (thanks to David T. for giving me the idea).
Do write to me if you have any useful resources that you would like to share with other readers of the blog.
Seventh Conference on Legal Translation, Court Interpreting and Comparative Legilinguistics (Legal Linguistics)
The Institute of Linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University will hold an international conference devoted to language and the law. The aim is to provide a forum for discussion in those scientific fields where linguistic and legal interests converge, and to facilitate integration between linguists, computer scientists and lawyers from all around the world.
The conference will be held over 3 days, from 29th June to 1st July 2012 in Poznan, Poland.
For more information see the conference website.
Today’s post was brought to my attention by Lawhaha.com. It is an appeal involving the keeping of a squirrel as a family pet, in Pennsylvania, USA.
You can find the whole opinion here, but I’ve selected a few highlights below. This is authentic, by the way, as you will see from the opinion published in the official record. Judge Hudock clearly has a great sense of humo(u)r…
“This appeal revolves around the life and times of Nutkin the squirrel.
Nutkin’s early life was spent in the state of ferrae naturae, in the state of South Carolina, and, as far as we can tell, in a state of contentment. She apparently had plenty of nuts to eat and trees to climb, and her male friends, while not particularly handsome, did have nice personalities. Life was good.
eCPD Webinars are presenting a series of five 1-hour webinars in June and July, on legal terminology in England and Wales.
The speaker is David Hutchins of Lexacom, who teaches law and terminology at face-to-face workshops and seminars, both to translators, and to lawyers from civil code systems who are less familiar with common law.
Webinar 1, 26 June: Contracts and Contract Formation for Legal Translators
Webinars 2 & 3, 28 June: The English Legal System for Legal Interpreters and Translators
Webinars 4 & 5, 3 July: Criminal Law and Procedure for Legal Interpreters and Translators
Every interpreter who has worked on a deposition will be familiar with lawyers using interpretation as a way to bargain. However, I hadn’t thought about this in the context of written translations before.
This guest post, by Dan Harris and first published at China Law Blog, started me thinking about this issue. Dan writes and speaks extensively on Chinese law.
I hope you will have lots of comments, because I think it’s a fascinating subject for discussion. I’ll be writing more about this in a couple of weeks.
A wonderful resource is now available on iTunesU. There are fifteen video courses, free of charge, for download, on subjects ranging from the free movement of goods, the various institutions and acts, to the Internal Market and the Integration Process.
The course has been made available by Alberto Alemanno, Associate Professor of Law at at HEC Paris, where he holds a Jean Monnet Chair in EU Law & Risk Regulation. He teaches EU law, International Economic Law, Global Antitrust and Risk Regulation. He is also Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches Global Risk Regulation, and a qualified attorney at law in New York since 2004.
France’s HEC, or Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, was listed as Best European Business School in the Financial Times overall ranking of European business schools for the 6th consecutive year in 2011.
On his blog, Alemanno also mentions an iPad version of the course coming soon.
For more about iTunesU and some iPad apps, see my post here.
The recently launched Legal Linguistics Network – RELINE (short for REtsLIngvistisk NEtværk) wants to remedy the lack of dialogue between disciplines.
Now as far as the author of this blog is concerned, that’s always a good thing!
The network, launched by the University of Copenhagen, includes scholars from all over the world – jurists, linguists, rhetoricians, and communication scholars, and also philosophers, political scientists and anthropologists. There is no charge for membership.
From Words to Deeds: translation & the law 
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