Court language
The language of the court is the language in which court hearings take place.
Germany
According to § 184 GVG, the language of the court is German, although in the Sorbian settlement area in Saxony and Brandenburg, applications and negotiations may also be submitted or carried out in Sorbian .
The language of the court is one of the procedural requirements : Applications that are not written in German are fundamentally ineffective. According to a ruling by the European Court of Justice, however, considerable restrictions apply to criminal proceedings : If a pleading is to be regarded as essential (although this cannot usually be determined without the translation), the court has, according to Directive 2010/64 / EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of October 20, 2010 on the right to interpreting and translations in criminal proceedings to translate the brief into German ex officio. However, this only applies to the defendant who is not represented by a criminal defense attorney , since otherwise, according to Art. 6 Para. 3 Letter e of the European Convention on Human Rights, the defense attorney has a legal right to a free translation of his pleadings.
In principle, all judges who are involved in a process must also have a command of the language of the court (i.e. German), including the honorary judges or lay judges . A violation of this can fulfill the absolute reason for a review of the improper composition of the court.
In criminal proceedings , a court interpreter may have to be appointed ex officio if the accused does not speak German ( § 187 GVG). The same applies to the oral hearing of civil proceedings if the hearing involves people who do not speak German ( Section 185 of the GVG).
The regulation on the language of the court does not extend to foreign-language documents that are to be used in the form of documentary evidence: These may be introduced into the process in their original language and may have to be translated into German via the expert's evidence. The parties (but not third parties) only have to have documents translated by a document translator at their own expense in civil proceedings , where the principle of presentation applies, unless all parties involved in the proceedings, including the judge, are able to speak the foreign language or the court expressly orders this ( Section 142 (3) ZPO).
If a person does not speak the German language, they may take a legally required oath (e.g. when questioned as a witness) in their mother tongue ( Section 188 GVG).
Individual evidence
- ^ BGH, judgment of July 14, 1981, AZ 1 StR 815/80.
- ↑ ECJ, judgment of October 15, 2015, AZ C-216/14.
- ^ BGH, decision of February 9, 2017, AZ StB 2/17.
- ^ BGH, judgment of January 26, 2011, AZ 2 StR 338/10.
- ^ BGH, judgment of November 9, 2011, AZ 1 StR 302/11.
- ↑ OLG Munich, judgment of January 16, 2008, AZ 15 U 4623/07.