Author: rebeccajowers

Legal English Look-alikes: “bail,” “bailiff” and “bailment”

rebeccajowers Confusing Terms

Legal _Look-alikes_

At first glance “bail,” “bailiff” and “bailment” would appear to be related terms, but actually they’re not!

“Bail” is perhaps the most easily recognizable of the three, being the English term for the fianza given by a criminal defendant to elude pretrial detention and be “released on bail” (salir en libertad con fianza*) while awaiting trial. In English we say that a judge “grants bail” (acuerda la libertad con fianza) and “fixes (or) sets bail” (fija la fianza), while the accused “posts bail (or) a bail bond” (presta fianza), and is thus granted “pretrial release” (libertad provisional). When bail is posted by a third party, a less formal expression is “to bail (someone) out of jail” is often used. Failure to comply with the terms of pretrial release is known variously as “jumping (or) skipping bail” (violar/quebrantar las condiciones de la libertad con fianza), which may result in forfeiture of the amount posted.

Bail’s look-alike “bailiff” denotes a court officer, generally in charge of maintaining order during court proceedings, but who may have other duties (depending on the jurisdiction), such as assisting a sheriff, serving process and executing court orders. Bailiffs also act as court criers, announcing the judge’s entrance in the courtroom (the famous “Oyez, oyez, oyez!” explained here). “Bailiff” is often rendered in Spanish as alguacil, a term that isn’t used in Spain where a court officer known as auxilio judicial keeps order in the courtroom when a judge requests him to do so (guarda la Sala bajo las órdenes del Juez).

And, finally, “bailment” is likewise totally unrelated to the previous two, being the English term for the Spanish contrato de depósito. The fact that these are kindred concepts is evidenced in a simple comparison of their definitions: Black’s Law Dictionary defines “bailment” as “delivery of personal property by one person (the bailor) to another (the bailee) who holds the property for a certain purpose under an express or implied-in-fact contract.” Similarly, as defined in the Spanish Civil Code, under a contrato de depósito, el depositante entrega una cosa mueble al depositario para su custodia y posterior restitución al depositante (a bailor delivers an item of personal property to a bailee for its safekeeping and subsequent return to the bailor).

 

*The expression that is perhaps most often seen is libertad BAJO fianza, although the term actually used in the Spanish Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal is libertad provisional CON fianza (arts. 505 and 539).

False Friends (or not?): contaminación; contamination

rebeccajowers False Friends

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When referring to certain types of damage to the environment (daños medioambientales), these terms are often cognates, as in contaminación medioambiental (“environmental contamination”) or contaminación radioactiva (“radioactive contamination”).

But in this same context contaminación is just as often rendered as “pollution” rather than “contamination.” “Environmental pollution” and “radioactive pollution” are quite common, as are similar expressions such as contaminación atmosférica (“air pollution”), contaminación de las aguas (“water pollution”), contaminación acústica (“noise pollution”) and contaminación lumínica (“light pollution”). Likewise, in this context contaminantes may be rendered as “contaminants” or “pollutants.”

In other respects, “contamination” is used in criminal forensics in expressions such as “contamination of evidence” or “contamination of DNA samples.” These may be rendered respectively as contaminación de pruebas and contaminación de muestras de ADN.

And, as a final example, lately in the Spanish press, journalists who disagree with judicial decisions often use the term jueces contaminados. In English the expression “contaminated judges” generally denotes judges who have a conflict of interest or who have already been involved or ruled on a related case. In contrast, in Spain jueces contaminados appears to be a term intended to accuse judges of a lack of impartiality when adjudicating politically sensitive matters.

Now in eBook! Thematic Lexicon of Spanish-English Legal Terminology

rebeccajowers ES-EN Legal Translation, Terminology Sources

9788490862650

I’m pleased to announce that my Léxico temático de terminología jurídica español-inglés is now available in ebook.

More than a few colleagues have asked for a searchable versión, and since the Léxico is admittedly quite extensive (over 1,000 pages), the ebook edition will indeed make finding specific terms and concepts easier.

The work contains over 20,000 legal terms, expressions and concepts from 15 areas of Spanish law with their corresponding English translations, and its thematic approach presents terminology in the context in which it actually appears in Spanish legal texts. I created it 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.

Here is a general overview of the Léxico’s content:

  • Law and the Judiciary (Derecho y sistema judicial)
  • Civil Procedure (Derecho procesal civil)
  • Criminal Law (Derecho penal)
  • Criminal Procedure (Derecho procesal penal)
  • Corrections Law (Derecho penitenciario)
  • Labor Law, Social Security Law and Labor Procedure (Derecho del trabajo, Derecho de la Seguridad Social y Derecho procesal Laboral)
  • Tax Law (Derecho tributario)
  • Law of Persons (Derecho de la persona)
  • Contracts (Derecho de los contratos)
  • Law of Torts (Derecho de daños)
  • Family Law (Derecho de familia)
  • Property Law and Property Registration (Derecho de cosas y Derecho hipotecario)
  • Law of Succession (Derecho de sucesiones)
  • Business Law (Derecho mercantil)

Download the full (32 page) table of contents: Léxico–Full table of contents.

Available from the Tirant lo Blanch legal publishers here.

 

Common Words with Uncommon (Legal) Meanings: señalar; señalamiento

rebeccajowers Common words with uncommon legal meanings

Common Words with Uncommon Legal Meanings

In his 1963 work “The Language of the Law,” the eminent legal linguist David Mellinkoff observed that legal discourse often uses “common words with uncommon meanings.” Indeed, in both Spanish and English common words and expressions often take on unexpected meanings when used in legal contexts, and there are many simple, seemingly inoffensive everyday words and expressions that can prompt serious translation mistakes if their special legal meanings are ignored. Here we take a look at possible legal meanings of señalar and señalamiento.

In common usage señalar means “to show, underscore or point out.” But in Spanish court procedure señalar often has the meaning of “to schedule,” “to docket” or “to calendar” (i.e., to set the date for trial, for rendering judgment, or for some other court event). Thus, the expression se acordó señalar el día diez de enero para votación y fallo indicates that the case in question was “scheduled (or) docketed (or) calendared for final deliberations and rendering judgment on January 10.”

The noun form is señalamiento and is often used in the sense of “trial.” Thus. petición de suspensión de vista por tener el letrado dos señalamientos is a lawyer’s request to have a hearing postponed due to his having two trials (señalamientos) scheduled on the dockets of different courts at the same time and day. In such cases the court is asked to señalar nueva fecha (reschedule the hearing on another day).

In other respects, in the informal jargon of Spanish real estate transactions señalar is sometimes used with the additional meaning of dar una señal (“to give a deposit” or “to put up earnest money”). Thus entregaron una cantidad de dinero para señalar el piso means “they put up earnest money as a deposit on the apartment.”

Spanish-English Legal Terminology in the New Year

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When I started this blog in 2016, I wondered whether there would be much interest in articles devoted exclusively to the translation of Spanish and English legal terms. Although I enjoy input concerning translation theory, methods, and tips in general, I felt there might be a niche for a more specifically specialized blog focused on the nitty-gritty of rendering some of the more difficult concepts of Spanish and Anglo-American law.

After three years I now think I may have been right, based on last year’s blog statistics showing 55,820 views from a total of 32,765 visitors.

It has been a pleasure to share this space with so many legal translation enthusiasts. More to come in 2020!

Español jurídico: Translating indefensión

rebeccajowers Español jurídico

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This term is often rendered literally as “defenselessness,” a word that certainly exists in English, obviously describing the state of being utterly defenseless. But “defenselessness” is perhaps an all-too-literal rendering for indefensión, which in addition to sounding somewhat unnatural, doesn’t really convey the meaning of the term in legal contexts.

Article 24.1 of the Spanish Constitution provides that todas las personas tienen derecho a obtener la tutela efectiva de los jueces y tribunales en el ejercicio de sus derechos e intereses legítimos, sin que, en ningún caso, pueda producirse indefensión. And the Spanish Constitutional Court has interpreted the term broadly as encompassing all of the Article 24 constitutional rights including el derecho al Juez ordinario predeterminado por la ley, a la defensa y a la asistencia de letrado, a ser informados de la acusación formulada contra ellos, a un proceso público sin dilaciones indebidas y con todas las garantías, a utilizar los medios de prueba pertinentes para su defensa, a no declarar contra sí mismos, a no confesarse culpables y a la presunción de inocencia.

Thus, indefensión denotes any circumstance that deprives a party of the possibility of defending himself at any time and in any way during the judicial process. Rather than “defenselessness,” indefensión may perhaps better be rendered as “denial of a means of defense,” “denial of justice,” or in view of the Article 24 guarantees involved, “denial of due process.”

Read more here

False Friends: When información isn’t simply “information”

rebeccajowers False Friends

False Friends Fridays new

There are several instances in legal Spanish in which “information” may not be the most appropriate translation for información. In the context of securities law, información privilegiada refers to “insider information,” while uso de información privilegiada denotes “insider trading (or) dealing” and normas sobre información privilegiada are “insider trading rules.”

In the context of corporate law, obligación (or) deber de información is not merely an “obligation to provide information” as the expression has sometimes been translated literally, but rather refers to “disclosure requirements” imposed upon publicly-traded companies pursuant to Spain’s Ley del Mercado de Valores (“Securities Market Act”).

And in the context of administrative law and urban planning, trámite de información pública refers to a legal requirement that information concerning certain public works projects be made available to the public to enable private citizens to present their opinions or objections (called alegaciones) before the project is implemented. In the UK this type of trámite de información pública is known as a “public consultation.” In that regard, the seemingly cryptic expression sacar el proyecto a información pública merely means “to submit the project to public consultation.”

Español jurídico: Translating causante

rebeccajowers Español jurídico

Legal Spanish for Translators

In the context of inheritance law (Derecho de sucesiones) causante has a particular meaning that is sometimes overlooked in translation. In its broadest sense (persona de quien otro deriva su derecho), causante is often rendered as “predecessor in title,” a translation that may certainly be appropriate in other circumstances. But in the context of the law of succession, causante more specifically denotes the “deceased” or “decedent.”

Causante has likewise been confused with testador (persona que hace testamento) and translated as “testator,” when the terms are clearly not the same. A causante was obviously a testator if he made a will before his death, but a testador is not a causante until he dies (giving causa or origin to the right to inherit his estate.) In this sense, causante es la persona que por su fallecimiento origina automáticamente la apertura de la sucesión. And of course a causante (“decedent,” “deceased”) was not a testator if he failed to leave a will and, thus, died intestate (murió intestado). In addition to causante, other terms sometimes used to denote a “decedent” or “deceased” include difunto, finado and the Latin expression de cuius.

(Definitions are from the Diccionario Jurídico Colex, Madrid, 2003)

Expressing Spanish Civil Law Concepts in Common Law Terms: What is prescripción ?

rebeccajowers Expressing Civil Law Concepts in Common Law Terms

ExpressingCivil LawConcepts

Simply put, prescripción refers to the effect of the lapse of time on creating or destroying rights (Black’s Law Dictionary). Prescripción extintiva is the extinguishment of rights or obligations due to the passage of time when certain legal requisites are met (extinción de derechos o obligaciones por el transcurso del tiempo y con los requisitos previstos en la ley). A common example is prescripción de acciones o delitos, the idea that the law bars civil claims or criminal prosecutions after a specified period. This is known in Anglo-American legal terms as a “statute of limitations” or “limitation act,” a law that establishes time periods in which actions must be brought or crimes prosecuted. After that period has elapsed, it is said that the right in question has become “time-barred” or “statute-barred,” or that “the statute of limitations (on that action, prosecution, etc.) has run,” (or in British English, “has expired”), all of which simply mean el derecho ha prescrito. Related expressions include:

  • plazo de prescripción—limitation period (statutory period after which a action, claim, prosecution, etc. cannot be brought)
  • comienzo del curso de la prescripción; inicio del cómputo del plazo de prescripción—moment at which the statute of limitations/limitation period begins to run
  • excepción de prescripción—statute of limitations defense (defense in civil proceedings that the action or claim is statute or time-barred)
  • interrupción de la prescripción—tolling of the statute of limitations (interruption of the running of a statute of limitations)

In contrast to prescripción extintiva, prescripción adquisitiva (also called usucapión) denotes the creation or acquisition of rights in property by the passage of time. Indeed, prescripción adquisitiva is a means of acquiring ownership or other property rights through open, notorious, unopposed and continuous possession of the property for a legally-established uninterrupted period of time (posesión pública, pacífica, continuada e ininterrumpida durante el plazo posesorio). In common law terms prescripción adquisitiva is tantamount to “adverse possesion,” a method of acquiring title by actual possession of another’s real property that is open, hostile, exclusive, continuous and adverse to the claim of the owner, and which may give rise to title if carried out for a specific statutory period (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law).

False Friends Fridays: imposición and “imposition”

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False Friends Fridays new

In legal contexts imposición (and imponer) can rarely be rendered literally as “imposition” (or “to impose”). In banking law imposición refers to a “deposit,” as in fecha de imposición (“deposit date”); imposición a plazo fijo (“time deposit”); imposición minima (“minimum deposit”) or “imposición en efectivo (“cash deposit”). In the context of tax law imposición denotes “taxation:” imposición directa (“direct taxation”); imposición indirecta (“indirect taxation”); doble imposición (“double taxation”) or convenio de doble imposición (“double tax treaty,” “treaty for the avoidance of double taxation”).

In procedural law imposición de costas is a court’s “award of costs.” Se imponen a la parte demandada las costas indicates that the “defendant is ordered to pay (the plaintiff’s/claimant’s) costs,” usually expressed in English from the perspective of the successful party, in this case as “plaintiff/claimant is awarded costs.” And in the context of criminal law, imposición de la pena refers in general to “sentencing,” as in imponer pena de prisión (“to sentence to prision,” “to impose a prison sentence”); imponer pena de multa (“to fine,” “to impose a fine”) or imponer la pena de privación del derecho de conducir (“to suspend/ revoke a driver’s license,” “to disqualify from driving”).