Fr-En online legal resource needed Thread poster: John Dawson
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John Dawson 
United States
Local time: 20:11
Spanish to English
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Looking for recommendations for online Fr-En LEGAL dictionary, as comprehensive as possible. I normally translate patents and contracts - terminology I'm familiar with. I'm currently saddled with a long court doc involving a patent infringement case, using unfamiliar litigation terminology. Help would be greatly appreciated!
| | | | | Plusieurs options sont disponibles | Oct 3, 2018 |
| | | | | | | Technical and legal | Oct 3, 2018 |
I can understand the difficulty. It is not unusual for legal translations to contain a fair amount of technical terminology. Lawyers have to become familiar with technical aspects arising in cases they are dealing with.
You will need to make sure that your FR>EN reference sources for vocabulary are valid for the target country. For example, British and American law may have a lot in common, but there are also important differences in their terminology. You may need to take time to ... See more I can understand the difficulty. It is not unusual for legal translations to contain a fair amount of technical terminology. Lawyers have to become familiar with technical aspects arising in cases they are dealing with.
You will need to make sure that your FR>EN reference sources for vocabulary are valid for the target country. For example, British and American law may have a lot in common, but there are also important differences in their terminology. You may need to take time to understand the processes involved, the French and the English processes. The term used to describe a particular document may vary according to who is producing it and at what particular time in the process the document is produced. These differences cannot be guessed at. There are also a fair number of false friends in French and English legalese.
A couple of questions:
- is the French source metropolitan France? If not, where is the source country?
- what is your target country?
- have you considered having your translation proofread to check that the legalese is on target? ▲ Collapse
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Eliza Hall
United States
Local time: 21:11
French to English
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| Do you have an attorney friend? | Oct 3, 2018 |
I agree with Nikki. Your best bet is to find an attorney in the target jurisdiction to proofread your translations. A legal translation dictionary either has to be enormous, to include all the possible jurisdictions for such languages, or limited and thus potentially not useful.
England/Wales and Scotland each have their own bars (the bar of England and Wales, and the bar of Scotland), and they have somewhat different legal systems. My understanding is that Scotland's is more civil ... See more I agree with Nikki. Your best bet is to find an attorney in the target jurisdiction to proofread your translations. A legal translation dictionary either has to be enormous, to include all the possible jurisdictions for such languages, or limited and thus potentially not useful.
England/Wales and Scotland each have their own bars (the bar of England and Wales, and the bar of Scotland), and they have somewhat different legal systems. My understanding is that Scotland's is more civil (in the European/French sense, not the civil vs. criminal sense) while England/Wales is common law. So I'm not sure an England-and-Wales lawyer could adequately proofread something that's supposed to be Scottish law, or vice-versa, but I'm sure they could tell you.
In the US the only really unusual jurisdiction is Louisiana, because their state law is based on French law. Everywhere else is based on English law, and unless you're translating something very state-specific, an attorney from any state (except Louisiana) could probably proofread it for you. I think there's a similar issue in Canada with respect to Quebec (French-like) and the other provinces (English-like).
Also pay attention to whether the original contract says anything about languages. Sometimes contracts between parties who speak different languages will say that one version (generally the original) controls -- in other words, if the translation is off at all, so the contracts say slightly different things, the original contract wins. If it says that both contracts are equally valid or that the translation controls, which is much less common but does happen, then you really, really need to be careful -- DO NOT do the translation without major assistance from a lawyer in the target jurisdiction. ▲ Collapse
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