permit
noun · Erlaubnis / Genehmigung
A permit is an Erlaubnis or Genehmigung, an authority’s act lifting a statutory prohibition. The decisive question is the type of prohibition: a präventives Verbot mit Erlaubnisvorbehalt gives a bound permit that must be granted once the conditions are met, while a repressives Verbot mit Befreiungsvorbehalt gives only a discretionary exemption.
Which translation, when
Why
A permit is rendered Erlaubnis or Genehmigung, and the words are largely interchangeable, so the work of translation is to convey the type of prohibition behind the permit, because that decides the legal consequence. Where the law contains a präventives Verbot mit Erlaubnisvorbehalt, the regulated activity is in principle permitted and the prohibition exists only to allow a preventive check; the permit, a Kontrollerlaubnis, is a bound administrative act, and once the statutory conditions are satisfied the applicant has a claim to its grant, the building permit being the textbook case. Where the law contains a repressives Verbot mit Befreiungsvorbehalt, the activity is in principle forbidden as undesirable, and only an exemption, a Befreiung or Ausnahmegenehmigung, may be granted in atypical cases; that grant lies in the authority’s discretion, so there is no claim as of right, the exceptional permit to trade in narcotics under the Narcotics Act being an example. The German labels Erlaubnis, Genehmigung, Bewilligung and Konzession do not track this distinction reliably, so a translation that renders permit without signalling the type risks presenting a discretionary exemption as though the applicant could insist on it, or the reverse. So the safe rendering names the permit and, where the source shows it, its bound or discretionary character.
Typical mistakes
- The type of prohibition decides the outcome: a Kontrollerlaubnis under a präventives Verbot is a bound act the applicant can claim, so presenting it as discretionary is wrong.
- An exemption under a repressives Verbot, a Befreiung or Ausnahmegenehmigung, lies in the authority’s discretion, so presenting it as a claim as of right is wrong.
- Erlaubnis, Genehmigung, Bewilligung and Konzession are near-synonyms for the granting act, so the label alone does not settle whether there is a claim.
What matters
Rendering a licensing provision, the translation should use Erlaubnis or Genehmigung for the permit and, where the source shows it, mark whether the scheme is a präventives Verbot mit Erlaubnisvorbehalt, giving a bound permit the applicant can claim, or a repressives Verbot mit Befreiungsvorbehalt, giving only a discretionary exemption.
What the machine misses
Machine output renders permit as Genehmigung or Erlaubnis interchangeably and drops the type of prohibition behind it. It loses that a Kontrollerlaubnis under a präventives Verbot mit Erlaubnisvorbehalt is a bound act the applicant can claim, while an exemption under a repressives Verbot mit Befreiungsvorbehalt lies in the authority’s discretion. The rendering hides whether there is a right to the permit.
Examples
| a building permit | eine Baugenehmigung |
| to apply for a permit | eine Genehmigung beantragen |
| the authority must grant the permit | die Behörde muss die Erlaubnis erteilen |
| an exemption from the prohibition | eine Ausnahme von dem Verbot |