conviction
noun · Verurteilung
Verurteilung translates conviction, but English keeps conviction, the finding of guilt, and sentence, the penalty, as separate stages, while German pronounces both together in one Urteil, the Schuldspruch and the Strafausspruch, § 260 IV StPO. And a spent conviction is not erased, German law never deletes the entry but limits its use, Tilgung and a Verwertungsverbot under § 51 BZRG.
Which translation, when
Why
In English procedure conviction and sentence are two steps, the defendant is first convicted, then sentenced at a later hearing, and conviction names the guilt-finding by itself. German law does not separate them, the Urteil contains both the Schuldspruch and the Strafausspruch, delivered together by the same bench, § 260 IV StPO, so conviction as a distinct stage has no German counterpart and Verurteilung really denotes the whole guilty judgment, the penalty side being the domain of Strafe and Strafmaß. A second gap is the spent conviction, English rehabilitation removes a conviction from view after a set period, while German law never deletes the fact but restricts its use, the entry is subject to Tilgung after the periods of the Bundeszentralregistergesetz and, once tilgungsreif, to a Verwertungsverbot under § 51 BZRG that bars it from being held against the person. Rendering all of this with a bare Verurteilung loses both the stage-structure and the record mechanics, and can suggest either a procedural step German law lacks or an erasure it does not grant.
Typical mistakes
- Conviction is the guilt-finding, Schuldspruch, and sentence is the penalty, Strafausspruch, but German pronounces them together in one Urteil, § 260 IV StPO, so an English conviction as a separate stage does not exist in German procedure.
- A spent conviction is not deleted in German law, it is subject to Tilgung and a Verwertungsverbot, § 51 BZRG, so translating spent conviction as an erased or expunged record is wrong.
- Verurteilung usually carries the sentence with it, where only the guilt-finding is meant, Schuldspruch is the precise word, so using Verurteilung for the bare finding can overstate what happened.
What matters
A criminal-record or CV question crossing between the systems: rendering an English conviction or spent conviction with a bare Verurteilung can suggest either a separate procedural stage German law does not have or an erasure § 51 BZRG does not grant, which gives only a Verwertungsverbot once the entry is tilgungsreif, so the reader misjudges what an old record still means.
What the machine misses
Conviction becomes Verurteilung in machine output, which is right for the whole guilty judgment but blurs two things, that English conviction is a stage of its own, separate from sentence, where German fuses Schuldspruch and Strafausspruch into one Urteil under § 260 IV StPO, and that a spent conviction is not erased but merely barred from use under § 51 BZRG. The reader loses both the procedural structure and the true status of an old record, and may read an expungement into a system that grants only a Verwertungsverbot.
Examples
| to secure a conviction | eine Verurteilung erwirken |
| a previous conviction | eine Vorstrafe |
| a spent conviction | eine getilgte Verurteilung |
More notes on these sections
acquittal Freispruch