When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

billón ; billion

Although these are not strictly legal terms, confusing billón and “billion” may give rise to mistakes in legal translation. As defined in the DLE, in Spain billón is a million millions (i.e., un millón de millones que se expresa por la unidad seguido de 12 ceros). In the US, however, a “billion” is a thousand millions (un millar de millones, o la unidad seguido por 9 ceros). In the UK, prior to 1974, a billion was traditionally defined as a million millions, in line with Spanish usage, and the US billion (a thousand millions) was called a “milliard.” In 1974 Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that, in conformity with international custom, UK government statistics would adopt the “billion = thousand millions” definition, which is now prevalent in official documents and in the British press. Nevertheless, to avoid confusion translators should be aware that some older UK or other English-language sources may use the term “billion” with the meaning of “a million millions.” Moreover, it is worth noting that the EU’s Interinstitucional Style Guide for publications in English indicates that “‘billion’ is used to designate a thousand million (and not a million million) and ‘trillion’ a million million.” (http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-4100500en.htm)

Read more here:

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN04440.pdf.

http://www.fundeu.es/recomendacion/elbillion-inglesno-equivaleal-billon-espanol-858/

retribución; retribution

These terms are true false cognates. Retribución denotes recompensa o pago de algo. In contrast, “retribution” only rarely has the meaning of recompense or reward, and is usually associated with punishment (castigo) or taking vengeance (venganza) for wrongdoing, often being used in that sense in criminal law contexts (“retributive justice,” the “retributive theory of punishment,” etc.).

Thus in corporate law contexts, retribución de los administradores (or) consejeros refers to “directors’ remuneration (or) compensation,”* rather than “directors’ retribution,” as the expression has sometimes been mistranslated in Spanish sources. In that regard, the boards of directors of large Spanish corporations often have a Comité de Nombramientos y Retribuciones (“Appointments and Remuneration (or) Compensation Committee”). And in this context, retribución en especie refers to “non-cash compensation” or “compensation in kind,” while retribución por horas extraordinarias is “overtime pay.” Other examples include política de retribuciones (“remuneration policy;” “compensation policy”); paquete de retribuciones (“pay package”) and retribución por vacaciones (“vacation/holiday pay”).

*“Compensation” would perhaps be the preferred term in the US, while “remuneration” is more often used in the UK.

When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

secreto; secret

Secreto and “secret” are cognates when referring, for example, to secretos industriales (“trade secrets”). But in many legal contexts the terms may be considered “false friends.” The expression derecho al secreto de las comunicaciones refers to the constitutional “right of privacy” with regard to information exchanged by phone, through the mail or electronically. And in the context of court procedure, secreto is perhaps best translated as “privileged.” In that sense secreto profesional is not “professional secrecy,” as the expression has sometimes been rendered, but rather denotes the confidentiality required in certain privileged relationships. Common examples include secreto profesional del abogado or secreto profesional entre abogado y defendido (“lawyer-client privilege;” “attorney-client privilege”); secreto profesional médico (“doctor-patient privilege;” “physician-patient privilege”) and secreto profesional periodístico (or) de los periodistas (“journalist’s privilege;” “reporter’s privilege” or “newsman’s privilege”). The reference to testigos con deber de guardar secreto denotes “witnesses with testimonial privilege.” Indeed, in certain cases a husband or wife may decline to testify against a spouse, claiming “marital privilege” or “marital communications privilege” and, in general, spouses share a “privilege of confidential marital communications.” And secreto de confesión denotes “priest-penitent privilege” or “clergyman-penitent privilege.” Thus, in general, obligación de guardar secreto is not an “obligation to keep secrets,” but the “obligation to maintain confidentiality,” and documentos secretos are simply “confidential (or) classified documents.”

In criminal procedure, secreto del sumario (or secreto sumarial) refers to the “confidentiality of criminal investigations” and to the fact such proceedings are generally made known only to persons involved in the inquiry. In a more restrictive sense, a judge may initially declare a criminal inquiry confidential (declarar el secreto del sumario), prohibiting suspects and witnesses from publicly revealing details of the investigation. When the investigation is subsequently opened to other parties, this is known as levantamiento del secreto del sumario. And in other respects, the criminal offense of violación de secretos denotes “unlawful access to privileged (or) confidential information.”

When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

transacción; transaction

There are many legal expressions in which transacción and “transaction” are obvious cognates, as in transacciones financieras (financial transactions); transacciones inmobiliarias (real estate transactions); transacciones comerciales (commercial transactions) or transacciones con tarjetas de crédito (credit card transactions). But in the context of civil procedure transacción has a different meaning, denoting a “settlement” reached by the parties to a dispute. In that regard, the parties may reach an out-of-court settlement (transacción extrajudicial) or may settle in court during the course of proceedings (transacción judicial). In that case, the judge will ratify (homologar) the settlement (described as homologación judicial de la transacción). This type of ruling ratifying a settlement (auto homologando la transacción) may be expressed in English as an “agreed judgment,” “consent judgment,” “stipulated judgment” or “judgment by consent.”

It should perhaps be noted that in this context transacción is the noun form of the verb transigir, defined in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española as ajustar algún punto dudoso o litigioso, conviniendo las partes voluntariamente en algún medio que componga y parta la diferencia de la disputa. Thus, transigir might be appropriately rendered in English as “to settle,” “to reach a settlement” or perhaps more generally as “to compromise.”

When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

disolución de matrimonio; dissolution of marriage

These expressions are sometimes false cognates. Under Spanish law disolución de matrimonio (or disolución matrimonial) is a broad term encompassing the three legal means by which a marriage may be terminated: disolución de matrimonio por muerte, por declaración de fallecimiento de uno de los cónyuges o por divorcio. In contrast, in many English speaking jurisdictions the expression “dissolution of marriage” is used almost exclusively as a synonym (or perhaps a euphemism) for “divorce,” and may be limited to that meaning. Thus, “dissolution of marriage” may often be correctly rendered in Spanish as divorcio while, depending on the context, the appropriate English translation of disolución de matrimonio may either be “divorce,” “termination of marriage by death” or “termination of marriage by a judicial declaration of death (of a missing spouse).”

When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

colegio electoral ; Electoral College

With the upcoming November elections in the US and with two general elections in Spain within the last six months, perhaps this is a good time to take a look at these obvious “false friends.” In current Spanish usage colegio electoral denotes a “polling place” or “polling station”, i.e., the place where voters cast their ballots on election day. In contrast, in the US the Electoral College is a body of electors from each state who every four years elect the President and the Vice President of the United States. By tradition, the US President and Vice President are not elected directly by popular vote, but rather voters in each state elect a given number of electors to the Electoral College who, in turn, then elect the President and Vice President.

Read more here: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html

seguridad ; security

Seguridad may certainly be rendered directly as “security” in many legal contexts. Common examples include seguridad social (“social security”), seguridad nacional (“national security”), securidad ciudadana (“citizen security”), empresa de securidad (“security company”), guardia de seguridad (“security guard”) or prisión de alta seguridad (“high security prison”).

But in other contexts, seguridad more appropriately denotes “safety.” This is the case in expressions such as seguridad e higiene en el trabajo (“safett and health in the workplace” or “occupational safety and health”), seguridad vial (“road safety”) or caja de seguridad (“safety deposit box”).

In addition to “security” and “safety,” seguridad must be rendered as “certainty” in the expression seguridad jurídica (“legal certainty”). And of course the opposite concept is falta de seguridad jurídica or inseguridad jurídica, which in English is “lack of legal certainty.”

In other respects, the expression Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad is often translated literally as “security forces,” but actually refers collectively to the various “police forces” operating in Spain as defined in Organic Law 2/1986. These include the national police forces (Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad del Estado) comprising the Guardia Civil and Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, and police forces at the regional (comunidad autónoma) and local levels. In that regard, several of Spain’s comunidades autónomas maintain regional police forces including Catalonia (Mossos d’Esquadra), the Basque Country (Ertzaintza), Navarre (Policía Foral) and the Canary Islands (Policía Canaria). At the municipal level there are likewise security forces known variously as Policía Municipal, Policía Local or Guardia Urbana.

In addition, and despite the name, Policía Judicial does not denote a separate police force within this scheme, but rather any member of the Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad who is assigned to the courts and/or who carries out a judicial order or acts in any way on behalf of the courts.

Special mention should perhaps also be made of medidas de seguridad, which in criminal law contexts are not simply “security measures” or “safety measures,” as the expression has sometimes been rendered. As a type of criminal sentence, medidas de seguridad penales are custodial or non-custodial treatment orders that, for example, may be imposed on the perpetrator of a criminal offense who for reason of a mental disorder has been declared exempt from criminal liability (declarado exento de responsibilidad criminal) by a court of law. In that regard, possible custodial measures include commitment to a correctional psychiatric hospital, a rehabilitation facility or a special education institution (internamiento en un hospital psiquiátrico penitenciario, centro de deshabituación o centro educativo especial).

In English, and among many other meanings, “security” (often in the plural, “securities”) denotes a series of títulos valores negociables (“marketable securities”) such as stocks and bonds (acciones y bonos). Thus, for example, “securities exchange” is mercado de valores, “Securities Act” is Ley del Mercado de Valores, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the US counterpart of Spain’s Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV).

When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

usurpación; usurpation

Usurpación is used in the definition of several types of criminal offense for which the literal translation “usurpation” may not be the most appropriate. In this context, usurpación generally denotes “unlawful appropriation.” The specific offense of usurpación de inmuebles may be rendered in many cases as “squatting.” Usurpación de estado civil broadly describes various modes of “identity theft,” while usurpación de atribuciones generally denotes “misappropriation of powers.” In that regard, usurpación de funciones públicas may refer to “improper assumption of office” or perhaps to “impersonating a public official,” while usurpación de funciones policiales is “impersonating a police officer.” In the terminology of intellectual property offenses, usurpación often has the meaning of “infringement,” as in usurpación de patentes y modelos o dibujos industriales (“infringement of patents and industrial models or designs”). In official EU documents the expression usurpación de marca is sometimes translated as “counterfeiting,” as in la lucha contra la usurpación de marca y la piratería (“the fight against counterfeiting and piracy”). And, finally, usurpación may also be used to describe several types of computer crime such as “cybersquatting” (usurpación de nombres de dominio), “email spoofing” (usurpación de direcciones de correo electrónico) or “web spoofing” (usurpación de contenidos de páginas web).

When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context, one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

científico/a ; scientific

literatura científica ; scientific literature

In legal contexts the adjective ciéntifico/a cannot always be appropriately translated as “scientific.” In that regard, in criminal law ciéntifico/a often denotes certain areas of forensics. Thus, in Spain Unidades de Polícia Ciéntifica are “Forensic Police Units” or “Crime Scene Investigation Units” and, in general, la policía científica may be described variously as “forensic police,” “crime scene investigators” or perhaps even “crime scene evidence technicians.” In this context análisis científico refers to “forensic analysis,” and an expression such as técnicas científico-policiales dirigidas a la investigación del delito refers to “forensic techniques for use in criminal investigation” or simply “forensic criminal investigation techniques.”

In other respects, in English the expression “scientific literature” is likely to be understood to refer to documents dealing with some area of the sciences (biology, physics, medicine, etc.). In contrast, in Spanish and in legal contexts literatura científica is often synonymous with doctrina académica, denoting the writings of law professors and legal scholars, and may be appropriately translated as “legal scholarship,” “scholarly writing,” “academic opinion” or “the writing of legal scholars.” Thus, for example, la literatura más autorizada sobre la transmisibilidad de acciones refers to “the most authoritative scholarly writing (or) academic opinion concerning the transferability of shares.” Likewise, in this context the expression revistas científicas does not necessarily refer to “scientific publications,” but rather to “academic journals,” and revistas científicas de Derecho are specifically “law journals” or “law reviews.”

When learning legal terminology in a bilingual context one of the first pitfalls encountered are so-called “false friends,” words or expressions that appear to be cognates, but are actually unrelated in meaning. Many years ago I set about identifying the “Top 40 False Friends in Spanish-English Legal Translation.” As the list grew I had to change the title to “101 False Friends.” In my collection I now have well over that number and will be sharing some of them in this blog. To be fair, many are only partial false friends that may actually be cognates when used in one branch of law, while perhaps qualifying as false friends in another legal practice area. And in some instances the cognate may simply not be the most appropriate rendering in legal contexts.

actor; actor

The term actor is used in Spanish procedural terminology in at least two different contexts in which the term cannot be appropriately translated literally as “actor.” In civil procedure, at the trial (primera instancia) level actor and la parte actora are synonyms for demandante, denoting the “plaintiff” or “claimant” in a civil action.

In criminal procedure actor civil refers to a party to a criminal proceeding who is seeking compensation for damages for civil liability arising out of the criminal act being tried. In Anglo-American jurisdictions claims for compensation for damages arising from criminal offenses are typically filed in a separate civil suit and, thus, the role of the actor civil in the Spanish criminal process may often be unclear to English-speaking audiences. In brief, in Spain claims for compensation for damages arising during the commission of a crime (reclamación de la responsabilidad civil derivada de la comisión de un delito) are usually tried simultaneously with the prosecution of criminal defendants during criminal proceedings. Actor civil designates the party who enters an appearance in a criminal proceeding to file a claim for damages in what amounts to a civil liability action conducted simultaneously with (or within) a criminal procecution. Civil and criminal liability may thus be determined in the same proceeding if the actor civil enters an appearance and asks to be acknowledged as a party to the criminal proceedings as a plaintiff claiming damages based on the same incident for which a conviction for criminal liability is being sought (la parte solicita que se la tenga por personada en el procedimiento en calidad de actora civil). And in perhaps most cases the victim and and person seeking civil redress are obviously the same.

Actor civil has often been rendered literally as “civil plaintiff” or “civil claimant,” translations that perhaps fail to reflect the fact that the expression actually denotes a party to a criminal proceeding. And, indeed, since this “civil action within a criminal trial” concept will perhaps be foreign to English-speaking audiences, actor civil may require a more detailed descriptive translation such as “party claiming civil damages in a criminal proceeding.” In other respects, the civil claim heard during a criminal trial is often referred to as a proceso civil acumulado, precisely because it is, in effect, a civil action joined or consolidated with (within) a criminal procecution.

See: Víctor Moreno Catena and Valentín Cortés Domínguez. “El llamado ‘actor civil’ en el proceso penal.” Derecho Procesal Penal. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, 2005, p. 125 ff.