Rare, my foot. 'Pace' in this sense IMHO is still completely current and should be part of the vocabulary of any educated speaker. At most I could support marking it formal.

It normally just means 'in spite of [the sadly ill-considered opinions of] X.' 'With all due respect to X' is pretty similar, this is just a bit less in-your-face.

I'm not entirely sure the translation given is even the best choice; at least, it may well not be the only option. On the face of it, the German side looks as if it might be milder, but I'm not that familiar with this German expression, and this may be a case where there's no 1:1 equivalent.

The pronunciation is another question -- if I wanted say it out loud I would probably have to look it up to find out if it's Italian Latin (pah-chay, which sounds better to me) or English Latin (pay-see, which I suspect was traditionally considered correct). So yes, you could say it's rare in the sense that most people would probably never use it in conversation -- in my experience at least, it's mainly part of the written language.

accepted. So let's apply a [form.] instead of a "rare" and be done with it.

Ich glaube ein Beispielsatz wäre angebracht.

And the pronunciation offered definitely needs some attention. It sounds to me like all the other entries for "pace", whereas it should in fact be pronounced "pah-kay", "pah-chay" (also my personal preference) or "pay-see". See:
http://www.oup.com/oald-bin/web_getald7index1a.pl

I support the "formal/gehoben" tag.

Sorry, I just had a reply all typed to this and then lost my connection and didn't feel like rewriting it. I did mean to say sorry; 'my foot' was uncalled-for, I must have been in a testy mood or in a hurry or both.

I do agree that some marking would probably be helpful, and [form.] is okay with me.

I haven't seen /pah-kay/ in any dictionary; I don't think classical Latin pronunciation is usually used for Latin import words in an English context, is it? But both NOAD and Oxford-Duden list /pay-see/ as first choice, /pah-chay/ as second choice, so it would be good if the LEO audio clip could reflect both options.

If Anne likes the Italian one too (possibly the choral-music influence? *g*), that's good to know; I don't always have a good feeling for which British Latin pronunciations are still in use and which aren't.

I'd also like to suggest making it clear in some way that 'nahe treten' needs a dative object. Not sure if it's a good idea to add 'so.' on the English side, though; maybe someone else will have a better suggestion.

Ich würde das Ersuchen nach einem Beispielsatz unterstützen wollen ...

Ich bin mir der "genauen" englischen Bedeutung nicht bewußt. Nach dem bisher hier gelesenen (danke an hm -- us für die Umschreibung) würde ich allerdings keineswegs davon ausgehen, dass die deutsche Übersetzung weniger deutlich oder direkt ist.

ohne X zu nahetreten zu wollen ist meiner Meinung nach fast eine exakte Entsprechung zu "With all due respect to X", möglicher Weise sogar noch stärker.

In Anbetracht dessen, dass es auch die Wendung "ohne X nahetreten zu wollen" gibt (die sich meiner Meinung nach als deutsche Entsprechung nach der Definiton von hm -- us besser eignen würde), ist meinem Gefühl nach die Wendung ohne X ZU nahetreten zu wollen (die die Bedeutung impliziert, dass ich ihm nahetreten ja schon will, nur einfach nicht ZU sehr ...) sehr stark in Richtung: "Damit habe ich bewiesen, dass X ein Idiot ist ...".

Chambers:
pace2 - [prep] with the permission of or with due respect to (someone with whom one is disagreeing).
ETYMOLOGY: 1860s: Latin ablative of pax peace or pardon.

NOAD:
pace² - [prep.] with due respect to (someone or their opinion), used to express polite disagreement: narrative history, pace some theorists, is by no means dead

Webster's 3rd unabridged:
[4]pace - [prep.] with all due respect or courtesy to {I do not, pace ... the correspondents, claim to have made any "discovery" —E. M. Almedingen} {pace the feminists, I believe my own sex is largely responsible for this ... impertinent curiosity —Katharine F. Gerould}

Random House unabridged:
pace² - [prep.] with the permission of (a courteous form used to mention one who disagrees): I do not, pace my rival, hold with the ideas of the reactionists. [< L pace in peace, by favor (abl. sing. of pax peace, favor, pardon, grace)]

Oxford-Duden:
pace² - [prep.] (formal) - pace Mr Smith ...: ohne Mr. Smith (Dat.) zu nahe treten zu wollen ...

Pons-Collins:
pace¹ - [prep] ohne ... (dat) nahe treten zu wollen

• There is very little abstraction in Cezanne, who is closely attached to life (pace the critics who still maintain the opposite view today).
• the night was beautiful, the production lovely to look at, the text done justice to—and the audience, pace the critics, very pleased.
• The desire for a general explanatory theory - pace the postmodernist insurgence - remains so strong and widespread that it is fair, we think, to dub it the ...
• Most historians today have abandoned the aspiration to a kind of scientific objectivity in their work—pace their postmodernist critics.
• the family has historically been the largest provider of welfare and its importance in this regard shows no sign of decline (pace the analysis of functional ...
• Suppose it could be more convincingly argued, pace the criticism above, that demonstrative concepts are too fine[-]grained to account for the content of ...
• if he may not receive our whole-hearted thanks for vindicating, in Jason v. Wright, the rule in Shelley's Case, he may at least, pace the criticism of Lord ...
• historically and geographically contingent theories although we would not seek to link these exclusively to case studies (pace Jaspers’ remarks on case ...
• They do not limit themselves to reviews of the literature, but instead offer thoughtful analyses and (pace my remarks above) make useful comparisons.
• the whole Marxist tradition gets reduced to a binary opposition between ‘two Marxisms’ – that of the radical spirit which Jones (pace Derrida) wishes to ...
• of ‘visible language’. Because that leaves no external trace (pace Derrida), only a trace of a neurological kind.
• Risser is able to show convincingly that Gadamerian hermeneutics is not, pace Derrida, inherently coercive and even deconstruction cannot be understood as an ...
• We may not, pace Derrida, "know how to think what Nazism is"; but by patiently unraveling how National Socialism appropriated Bruckner and his music, we might ...

Okay, more examples. Maybe it would help just to add an i-link to this thread, possibly even instead of the previous one in which a couple of people claimed that it was no longer much in use.

I have the impression that sometimes it's used in a way more like 'contrary to (the opinion of) X.' So some other translation option might also be possible.

If it would help to see more examples in your own field, a web search with the name of some famously controversial scholar might help. (-:

Thanks again to hm -- us. These examples even support my opinion that "ohne ... zu nahe treten zu wollen" is the "stronger" expression.

So another translation might be:
im Gegensatz zur Meinung von X
or
anders als X meint