Month: November 2023

New! Just published! Spanish-English Dictionary of Legal Terms and Concepts

rebeccajowers Terminology Sources

At a certain age, you start contemplating retirement. (Those of you who know me know that I’m well over retirement age, but I’m not quite there yet.) But looking toward the not-so-immediate future, it occurred to me that the Spanish-English legal terminology glossaries that I’ve compiled over my 40-year career as a legal translator and professor of Legal English might prove useful to others in this field. (These include ES-EN legal translators and interpreters, as well as other legal professionals, such as my translation clients who are either lawyers who have to explain Spanish law in English to their English-speaking clients, or Spanish law professors who lecture and publish in English.)

Thanks to the fine work of the Tirant lo Blanch Legal Publishers, my glossaries were just published here as Diccionario de términos y conceptos jurídicos español-inglés in both print and ebook.

This is a companion work to my 2015 Thematic Lexicon of Spanish-English Legal Terminology that presented in detail the terms and concepts of 15 areas of Spanish law.

But this Dictionary includes terminology from 45 additional fields of law including arbitration, accounting, administrative law, advertising law, auditing, budgetary law, civil law, civil procedure, commercial transactions, competition law, constitutional law, consumer law, contract law, copyright law, corrections law, corporate law and the law of business organizations, criminal law, criminal procedure, customs, economics, electoral law, environmental law, EU law, family law, finance, forensic science, human rights, immigration law, Incoterms, inheritance law, law of succession, insurance law, insolvency law, international law, intellectual and industrial property, law and the judicial system, labor law, labor procedure, legal education, legal practice, maritime law, negotiable instruments, law of public notaries, law of obligations, patent law, law of persons, procedure (general), property law, law of public registers, securities law, social security law, tax law, trademark law, tort law, transportation law, unfair competition, urban planning, water rights and other general terminology.

For more information, see here

False Friends in Legal Spanish: “impertinente” is not impertinent

rebeccajowers False Friends

In legal usage “impertinent” and impertinente can usually be considered false friends. In nonlegal Spanish, impertinente has two possible meanings (taken from the DLE): 1) “que no viene al caso” (in English, “irrelevant”) and 2) “que molesta de palabra o de obra” (in English, “impertinent”).

In Legal Spanish impertinente generally has the first meaning: que no viene al caso; que es irrelevante (and, therefore, the matter in question is improcedente; no procede en Derecho). In the Spanish Law of Evidence there are two clear examples: prueba impertinente and pregunta impertinente. Prueba impertinente is defined as “prueba que no guarda relación con el objeto del proceso” (in Legal English, “irrelevant evidence”). This prohibition of irrelevant evidence is set forth in article 283.1 of the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil that provides that “no deberá admitirse ninguna prueba que, por no guardar relación con lo que sea objeto del proceso, haya de considerarse impertinente.”

In that regard, evidence can be classified as prueba pertinente or prueba impertinente (“relevant or irrelevant evidence”), prueba útil or prueba inútil (“material or immaterial evidence,” in the sense of being appropriate or inappropriate for demonstrating the fact that it is intended to prove), and prueba directa or prueba presencial (“direct evidence” or “eyewitness evidence”) as opposed to prueba indirecta or prueba indiciaria (“indirect evidence” or “circumstancial evidence”).

The same applies to preguntas impertinentes (in Legal English, “irrelevant questions”) that may not be used when examining witnesses at trial. The DPEJ defines pregunta impertinente as “cuestión que no deba ser respondida en juicio por el interrogado, al no corresponder con los hechos litigiosos o no guardar relación con el declarante.” And in addition to preguntas impertinentes (irrelevant questions), Spanish Law of Evidence likewise prohibits the use of preguntas sugestivas (“leading questions”) and preguntas capciosas (“misleading or trick questions”).