Spanish lawyers soon discover that they have to explain to many of their English-speaking clients the role that Spanish notarios (or civil law/Latin notaries, in general) play in ensuring legal certainty in civil law systems, why notarios must intervene in many seemingly everyday transactions and, ultimately, why they charge what they do(!).

But the opposite is also true: I’m sometimes asked about the role of notaries in the US, and I recently found an excellent answer to that question in an article that I’m sharing in a link below. Published in the Colegio Notarial de Madrid’s journal El Notario del Siglo XXI, the article entitled “¿Qué es lo que hace un ‘notary public’?” was written by José Antonio Márquez González, Mexican notario and member of the International Union of Notaries (UINL). It explains in Spanish and in detail the work of US notaries, providing sample texts in English and an extensive bibliography in the footnotes. It’s available here:

http://www.elnotario.es/practica-juridica/7317-que-es-lo-que-hace-un-notary-public

This post is not specifically on legal language, but several of my students of Legal English at the Universidad Carlos III asked me to summarize for them the basic differences between American and British spelling. I am including here part of a handout that I prepared for them in the event it may be of interest to a wider audience.

In researching this I came across an interesting article in the Daily Mail* that outlines the progression of the supposed acceptance of many American spellings in English worldwide. It maintains that as early as the 1880s English language publications began to prefer American spelling, which became even more popular after World War I. Charts appearing on seemit** actually show the years in which certain American terms supposedly surpassed the British (“gray” vs. “grey;” “flavor” vs. “flavour;” “liter” vs. “litre,” etc.)

Nevertheless, translators, legal professionals and students of legal English should be aware of what are still considered the preferred spellings on each side of the “Pond.” There may be some flux and leeway, and some may not view these as set-in-stone rules, but here is a minimal collection of US vs. UK spellings appearing on the Oxford Dictionaries website*** and in other sources:

* Cheyenne MacDonald. “The future is gray for British English: How American Spellings are taking over the world with ‘flavor,’ ‘center’ and ‘defense’ becoming the norm.” Daily Mail, July 27, 2016. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3711638/The-future-gray-British-English-Graphs-reveal-American-spelling-taken-1880s.html

** “The Decline of British English, Visualized” (author: oakstone) https://steemit.com/steemit/@oakstone/the-decline-of-british-english-visualized

*** https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/spelling/british-and-spelling)