Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> LawPundit

Legal Commentary

: LawPundit

Langenscheidt Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance English-German German-English published by licence agreement with Routledge Ltd, London

By Andis Kaulins

The definitive two-way Langenscheidt Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance (German-English English-German), now in its 3rd edition and published by license agreement with Routledge Ltd, London ("licence" in the UK) , and of which I am one of four co-authors, has a new link in English here, and I have changed the corresponding links on the LawPundit website which previously led only to the German-language page at Langenscheidt.

One reason that I am making this posting is that a random search of some library catalogues online indicates that there are still many libraries that do not have this essential resource, and if they do have it, they often have the totally outdated original 1997/1998 version which has been totally revised by us in the interim, and this includes the deletion of outdated entries. Even the Harvard Library has only the substantially improved 2002/2003 edition, but this runs only 1206 pages as compared to the 1440 page 2007/2008 edition. (Publication years vary because of CD-ROM versions etc.)

Especially in our contemporary fast-moving era of digital technology, five years of development are often like fifty or a hundred years only a decade ago. For example, SMS "texting" only really started in 1999, when SMS messages could first be sent between networks. The first BlackBerry integrating a cell phone was introduced in 2001. (A "cell phone", by the way, is called a "mobile phone" in the UK and a "Handy" in Germany - go figure). The current 3G mobile phone system, without which modern mobile phones could not do what they do, took off only in 2004.

The speed of change is shown by the development of online social networking. The social online network Friendster and also Plaxo Contacts were launched in 2002 and followed by MySpace (see U.S. President Obama's MySpace) and also the social business network LinkedIn in 2003, with the now most popular Facebook launched in 2004 and opened to the general public only in 2006. Twitter took off in 2007 and even U.S. President Obama used it before his inauguration in 2009. Tremendous changes as a result are taking place in the way social and business relationships are taking place - in the shortest span of time. In order not be overwhelmed, one has to keep up.

In a multilingual context, it is absolutely indispensable to have the most recent editions of state-of-the-art dictionaries, and believe you me, even we have trouble keeping up.

The German title of our English-German German-English Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance is Fachwörterbuch Wirtschaft Handel und Finanzen Deutsch-Englisch Englisch-Deutsch.

This dictionary is intended to be a comprehensive, up-to-date standard work and reference for business and legal professionals, for companies and institutions involved with Germany in business, commercial, financial and political affairs, as well as for specialist translators. Special attention has been paid to the integration of entries dealing with digital technology and the European Union. The 3rd edition now contains approximately 136,000 entries and updates are made annually to the CD-ROM version of the dictionary, which is fully searchable from one's desktop. New entries derive inter alia from personal experience and also the reading of cutting edge literature in the respective fields and that is why this dictionary is always one step ahead of the competition.

• The chief author/editor is: Ludwig Merz (professional translator and university Lecturer in economics and business administration)
  

The co-authors are:

• Andis Kaulins (J.D. Stanford University Law School, former Lecturer in Anglo-American Law, University of Trier Law School)
• Dr. Heinz Werner (economist, German Federal Employment Services), see also his Unemployment Compensation Systems - A Cross-Country Comparison -
  
• John M. Hill (former Director, Language Department, German Bundesbank), up to and including the 2nd edition
  

The fields covered (here by keyword) are: general commercial language, banking, taxation, education, the stock market, computers & the Internet, finance, leisure & tourism, property, import/export, industry in general, communications, management, media, patents, personnel management, politics, accounting, law, social security, statistics & mathematics, transport & logistics, environment, sales & marketing, insurance, administration, economics & business administration.

The Appendix contains business correspondence and documents, job titles used in commerce and management, International Standard Classification of Occupations, financial and economic indicators, cardinal and ordinal numbers, a list of countries, statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE), and Incoterms 2000.

For the librarians in our readership: the entry for the main library catalogue in German is found at the DNB (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, German National Library).

Otherwise, I have put up the essential library data at Good Reads, and it can also be found at Langenscheidt.

Dictionaries are not archives but living, useful, often daily consulted documents. Put this dictionary on your desk, on your active shelf, or, if you are a library, in your reading room. Much of what you don't find online for English-German or German-English translations, is in this volume. Not everything .... but we are constantly working on it.

Full post as published by LawPundit on March 20, 2009 (boomark / email).