Month: September 2024

Two Reference Works for Spanish-English Translators, Interpreters and Legal Professionals

rebeccajowers Terminology Sources

Last week one of the subscribers to this blog asked me which one of my two Spanish-English legal reference works would I recommend for (in her case) someone preparing a translation exam (oposición) and for future translation projects.

Given their different focus, it’s difficult for me to make a recommendation, so I’m providing here a description of each, along with downloadable pdfs containing samples of the content of each.

LÉXICO TEMÁTICO DE TERMINOLOGÍA JURÍDICA, ESPAÑOL-INGLÉS

(THEMATIC LEXICON OF SPANISH-ENGLISH LEGAL TERMINOLOGY)

The Léxico contains over 20,000 legal terms, expressions and concepts from 15 areas of Spanish law with their corresponding English translations. Over a ten-year period I took notes from the major textbooks used in Spanish law schools in each of the practice areas, culling them for the essential legal terminology and concepts. Presenting this as a lexicon rather than a dictionary allowed me to offer this terminology in the context in which it appears in Spanish legal documents in a two-column format in which the original Spanish is accompanied by one (or more) possible English renderings. I originally conceived this as a tool for intensive translator-interpreter terminology training, as well as for lawyers and law professors who require an in-depth knowledge of Spanish and English in the major legal disciplines, including:

Derecho y sistema judicial (Law and the Judiciary)

Derecho procesal civil (Civil Procedure)

Derecho penal (Criminal Law)

Derecho procesal penal (Criminal Procedure)

Derecho penitenciario (Corrections Law)

Derecho del trabajo, Derecho de la Seguridad Social y Derecho procesal laboral (Labor Law, Social Security Law and Labor Procedure)

Derecho tributario (Tax Law)

Derecho de la persona (Law of Persons)

Derecho de los contratos (Contract Law)

Derecho de daños (Tort Law)

Derecho de familia (Family Law)

Derecho de cosas y Derecho inmobiliario registral (Property Law and Property Registration)

Derecho de sucesiones (Law of Succession)

Derecho mercantil (Business Law—includes Derecho societario, i.e., Corporate Law and Law of Business Organizations)

Here is a pdf with a sample of the Léxico’s content (68 pages. It can be read directly in this post or downloaded via the button below):

Jowers Lexicon Sample ContentsDownload

The Léxico is available here in both print and in ebook from the Tirant lo Blanch legal publishers.

DICCIONARIO DE TÉRMINOS Y CONCEPTOS JURÍDICOS, ESPAÑOL-INGLÉS

(SPANISH-ENGLISH DICTIONARY OF LEGAL TERMS AND CONCEPTS)

With almost 30,000 entries, the Diccionario includes the terminology and concepts contained in the Léxico along with content from my personal legal translation glossaries compiled during my 45-year career as a legal translator and professor of Legal English in the Máster de Asesoría Jurídica de Empresas programa at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. Each entry includes an indication of the area of law in which the term is used, one or more possible translations or a brief definition if there is no functional equivalent in English, plus synonyms for the term, if any. The dictionary format enabled me to include terminology from many other legal practice areas in addition to the 15 areas of law covered in the Léxico, including:

Arbitraje (arbitration)

Auditoría (auditing)

Ciencia forense (forensics)

Contabilidad empresarial (business accounting)

Derecho (general) (terms used in several practice areas) (law—general)

Derecho administrativo (administrative law)

Derecho aduanero (customs law)

Derecho bancario (banking law)

Derecho civil (civil law)

Derecho concursal (insolvency law)

Derecho constitucional (constitutional law)

Derecho de aguas (water law)

Derecho de autor (copyright)

Derecho de cosas (property law)

Derecho de daños (tort law)

Derecho de extranjería (immigration law)

Derecho de familia (family law)

Derecho de la competencia (competition law)

Derecho de la competencia desleal (unfair competition)

Derecho de la persona (law of persons)

Derecho de la publicidad (advertising law)

Derecho de la Seguridad Social (social security law)

Derecho de la Unión Europea (EU law)

Derecho de las obligaciones (law of obligations)

Derecho de los consumidores (consumer protection)

Derecho de los contratos (contract law)

Derecho de los seguros privados (insurance law)

Derecho de los títulos valores (negotiable instruments)

Derecho de los transportes (transportation law)

Derecho de marcas (trademark law)

Derecho de patentes (patent law)

Derecho de sucesiones (law of succession)

Derecho del mercado de valores (securities law)

Derecho del trabajo (labor law)

Derecho electoral (electoral law)

Derecho internacional (international law)

Derecho marítimo (maritime law)

Derecho medioambiental (environmental law)

Derecho notarial (law of public notaries)

Derecho penal (criminal law)

Derecho penitenciario (corrections law)

Derecho presupuestario (budgetary law)

Derecho procesal (general) (procedure—general)

Derecho procesal civil (civil procedure)

Derecho procesal laboral (labor procedure)

Derecho procesal penal (criminal procedure)

Derecho registral (law of public registers)

Derecho societario (corporate law; law of business organizations)

Derechos humanos (human rights)

Economía (economics)

Ejercicio de la abogacía (legal practice)

Finanzas (finance)

Formación jurídica (legal education)

Fraseología jurídica (common expressions found in legal texts and contracts) (legal phraseology)

Incoterms (incoterms)

Operaciones comerciales—general (commercial transactions—general)

Propiedad intelectual e industrial (intellectual property)

Protección de datos (data protection)

Sistema judicial (judicial system; organization of courts)

Urbanismo (urban planning)

Here is a pdf with a sample of the Diccionario’s content (75 pages). It can be read directly in this post or downloaded using the button below:

Jowers Dictionary-Sample pagesDownload

The Diccionario is available here in both print and in ebook from the Tirant lo Blanch legal publishers.

False Friends in ES-EN Legal Translation: “inhibición” vs. inhibition

rebeccajowers False Friends , , , ,

Just a short post here to underscore that in Spanish procedural terminology inhibición has a peculiar meaning totally unrelated to “inhibition,” denoting a judge’s declining or relinquishing jurisdiction over a case in favor of another court. Thus, for example, el TSJ de Madrid se inhibió en el “Caso Gürtel” a favor de la Audiencia Nacional indicates that “The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid declined (or) relinquished its jurisdiction in the Gürtel case in favor of the National Court.”

In this context inhibición is often confused with abstención and recusación. How the related terms abstención, recusación, inhibición and declinatoria are used in procedural contexts is explained in detail here.)

Guidelines for Giving a Presentation in English

rebeccajowers Legal English for Spanish-speakers

Speaking skills are perhaps the most difficult to acquire when learning a new language, and my Legal English students have often said that giving a formal presentation is the most difficult of all. I put together these Guidelines for their use, and I’m posting them here in case they may prove useful to others. At the end there is a “Rate Yourself” chart for assessing overall effectiveness.

Guidelines for Giving a Presentation in English

BEFORE YOUR PRESENTATION

  • Define your audience
  • Plan the content
  • Use your own words
  • Prepare handouts or other visual aids
  • DO NOT USE GOOGLE TRANSLATE OR SIMILAR APPS to prepare your presentation (the results may be a disaster!)

DURING YOUR PRESENTATION

  • Keep it simple
  • Follow a clear structure
  • Look directly at your audience
  • Project your voice
  • DO NOT READ

USEFUL LANGUAGE

1. Introducing your topic

  • This morning/today…
  • I’m going to talk about…
  • I’d like to describe…
  • The topic of my presentation is…
  • This morning I’d like to give you an overview of…
  • The theme of my talk is…
  • My presentation this morning concerns…
  • This afternoon I would like to talk to you about…
  • I will be examining the following areas…
  • This presentation focuses on the issue of…

2. Preliminary outline of your presentation

  • First,/Second,/Then,/After that,/Finally,
  • I’d like to… deal with…/move on to…/focus on…/consider…
  • First, I’m going to look at …
  • Second, I’ll move on to the issue of …
  • Then I’ll examine …
  • Lastly/Finally, I’ll look at / focus on …
  • My presentation is divided into/I’ve divided my talk into… (three/four parts…)
  • I have divided my talk into the following main areas: …
  • I am going to divide my presentation into two main parts. First I’m going to describe… and then I’ll move on to look at …

3. Referring to questions

  • Feel free to interrupt me if you have a question.
  • If you don’t mind, we’ll leave questions until the end.

4. Introducing each section

  • Let’s start with… (objectives)
  • First we’re going to look at…
  • I’d like to begin by…
  • Now I’d like to focus on…
  • I’d like to mention three points here…
  • Now let’s move on to … (the next part)
  • Let’s turn our attention to… (the question of…)
  • This leads me to… (my third point…)
  • Finally… (let’s consider…)

5. Making reference to other sections of the presentation

  • As I mentioned earlier…
  • I’ll say more about this later.
  • I’ll come back to this point later.

6. Referring to common knowledge

  • As you know…
  • As you may recall/remember…

7. Referring to visual aids (handouts, powerpoints, etc.)

  • This chart/outline/etc. shows/represents…
  • If you look at this chart/table/etc….
  • I’d like to draw your attention to this diagram/chart/table/etc….
  • The data here shows that…

8. Summarizing main points and making conclusions

  • To summarize, (there are five key points…)
  • In conclusion,…
  • To conclude my presentation, I would like to…

RATE YOURSELF

How was your presentation?

 ExcellentGoodOKPoor
System
-organization
-knowledge of topic
-introduction
-ending
-connections
-relevance
-length
-level  		    
Manner
-audience contact
-interest
-assurance
-confidence  		    
Body Language
-stance
-posture
-hands
-eye contact
-movement
-facial expression  		    
Visual aids
-number
-design
-relevance
-usefulness  		    
Overall impression      

ES-EN Legal Translation: Multiple Meanings of “Remand”

rebeccajowers Multiple Meanings

Remand means “to send back, to remit or to consign again.” In legal usage “remand” is used in at least two separate instances. In appellate procedure “remand” refers to sending a case back to the trial court for further action consistent with the appellate court’s decision. This occurs, for example, when an appellate court reverses a trial court’s opinion and remands the case for a new trial. In Spanish the idea of remanding a case (i.e., sending it back to the lower court) is expressed as retrotraer (or) reponer las actuaciones. Thus, an appellate order such as “We reverse and remand for new trial” may be expressed as Anulamos la sentencia recurrida, retrotrayendo (or) reponiendo las actuaciones al momento anterior al juicio oral, debiendo celebrarse un nuevo enjuiciamiento.

In a second meaning remand refers to recommitting an arrestee to custody after some type of preliminary hearing before the court. For example, at a bail hearing, if bail is denied, the judge will order that the defendant be “remanded in custody.” This is often expressed in Spanish with the peculiar expression elevar la detención a prisión provisional (literally, to convert the initial arrest to pretrial detention or custody). And, especially in British usage, pretrial detainees (persons held in pretrial detention) are known as “remand prisoners,” while time spent in pretrial custody is “time spent on remand.”

“Translating ‘Derecho Penal'” at ATA65 Portland

rebeccajowers ES-EN Legal Translation

I’ll be giving an AST (Advanced Skills & Training) session at the American Translators Associations annual conference in Portland on October 30. For those who might be interested in attending, here is a description of the session with an outline of the aspects of Derecho Penal that we will be discussing.

ATA65 Portland—AST Session (AST-05)

Translating Derecho Penal

(Concepts and Terminology from a Comparative Law Perspective)

Drawing on examples from the códigos penales of Spain and Mexico as well as the Model Penal Code, Title 18 US Code and other US state codes, this session seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the concepts and terminology of Derecho penal from a common law viewpoint. We will focus on terms that legal T&Is may encounter as well as the major translation pitfalls found in criminal law documents, exploring the following aspects:

  • How criminal law is organized in Spanish-speaking jurisdictions: la Parte General (criminal law theory) vs. la Parte Especial (specific offenses and how they are defined and may be translated)
  • Principios del Derecho Penal (general principles of criminal law)
  • Teoría del Delito: a few essential concepts:
  • Definición del delito: the German model adopted in Spanish-speaking jurisdictions vs. the common law actus reus / mens rea elements
  • Understanding (and translating) tipicidad, antijuridicidad, culpabilidad and punibilidad
  • Clasificación de los delitos (how crimes are classified)
  • Other key concepts: acción y omisión; bien jurídico protegido; dolo vs. culpa; causalidad
  • Iter criminis (the road to crime): fases en la realización del hecho típico
  • impunidad del mero pensamiento: thinking isn’t a crime
  • actos ejecutivos: overt acts requirement; substantial steps toward the commission of a criminal offense
  • inchoate (preparatory or imperfect) crimes: conspiración (conspiracy); proposición (criminal solicitation); provocación (incitement to crime)
  • tentativa de delito (criminal attempt)
  • Autoría del delito (perpetration of criminal offenses)
  • Participación en el delito (aiding and abetting the commission of a crime)
  • complicidad (types of accomplice liability)
  • Teoría de la pena (theory of punishment)
  • Circunstancias modificativas de la responsabilidad criminal: agravantes; atenuantes y eximentes (aggravating, mitigating and exonerating circumstances; perfect and imperfect defenses)
  • Clases de pena (types of criminal sentences): penas privativas de libertad (custodial sentences) vs. penas no privativas de libertad (noncustodial sentences)
  • Determinación y aplicación de la pena (sentencing) and execución de la pena (execution / enforcement of sentences)
  • Translating specific offenses:
  • Homicidio vs. asesinato (when is it murder?)
  • Amenazas y lesiones (not exactly assault and battery?)
  • Violación; agresión sexual (translating sexual offenses)
  • Allanamiento de morada (breaking and entering, or mere trespass?)
  • Criminal defamation (distinguishing injurias and calumnias)
  • Hurto vs. robo (when is it theft, robbery or burglary?)
  • Delito de daños (criminal damage to property)
  • Cohecho (bribery)
  • Malversación (ES); peculado (MX) (embezzlement)
  • (others)
  • Wrap-up and recap: a look at problematic criminal law concepts and terminology pitfalls
  • Same Thing, Different Name: criminal law terminology in Spain and Mexico

Attendees will receive a bilingual-glossary of the criminal law terms discussed and additional translator/interpreter resources.