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Legal terms in French


GreyDude

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GreyDude
  • Law Student

TL;DR: I am looking for good English/French translations of legal terms, or good dictionaries/encyclopedias of legal terms in French—particularly in a Québec Civil Code context. 

Hi all, I'm currently working on a brief to the Québec government on behalf of the institution I work for, and since I'm not a lawyer (or even a law student at the moment), I'm struggling with some legal terminology that I really need to get straight. I am hoping that asking here can shorten my research time because I have a close deadline.

I'm trying to find some sources to help me with a some terminological and conceptual distinctions that I'm finding unclear.

The brief is on a Bill currently before the National Assembly. I actually need the French terminology, but I'm thinking that by using good sources in English, I should be able to clarify the French on my own. I'm working with the French version, which is the only official one, but referencing the English translation from time to time. 

The best glossaries I have found so far are the Emond Publishing glossary that's here: https://emond.ca/resources/glossary-of-legal-terms.html and the Québec Ministère de la justice glossary here: https://www.justice.gouv.qc.ca/centre-de-documentation/glossaire. Termium is also helpful (https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-fra.html), but I'm not sure that it's always good for Civil Code terms, being federal and all.  

To give an example, I'm having trouble with things like the difference between a "convention collective" and an "entente collective." The first is the standard French term for "collective agreement" (labour contract), but the latter has a very similar meaning (and standard translation software translates it identically). Now, from the context in the Bill plus the Quebec "glossaire" plus the English version of the Bill (which says "or every group agreement"), 'entente' clearly has a much broader meaning. But... still unclear. In the English translation, they chose to change the meaning of "collective" instead of clarifying the word that actually changes ("convention" vs "entente"), durnit! Not helpful.  

I'm not asking anyone to do my work for me, obviously. Also, what I am writing doesn't involve making legal arguments (which is good, as I'm not qualified). On the other hand, I do have to have try for clear grasp on the meaning of the terms in the Bill, to ensure that I don't end up making any silly mistakes (at least not big ones) in an important document. 

Oh, and any resource has to be publicly available, as I don't have institutional access to law databases apart from CanLii.

Many thanks for any help you can offer!

Edited by GreyDude
Yes, I did find the English version of the Bill.
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GreyDude
  • Law Student

Ok problem solved, more or less. I found what I needed and got the work done. Well, almost, anyway. 😅 

I’d still be interested in knowing if the resources I listed can be improved upon (English or French or both), but that’s for future reference.

Cheers!

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BlockedQuebecois
  • Lawyer

How’s your French? If it’s workable, the Guide fédéral de jurilinguistique législative française (JLF) might help.

The Guide is the Justice Department’s guide for legislative drafting in French, and thus can help with understanding why a piece of legislation may use some terms instead of others. See, for example, the section on whether to use “accord” or “entente” in legislative drafting. 

It’s a federal source so obviously not directly applicable, but legislation tends to be similarly drafted between jurisdictions. 

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Pantalaimon
  • Lawyer

In terms of a quick and dirty english translation of a term (or vice versa), Linguee is quite good because it shows you where a term's been used in pairs of translated english/french documents. DeepL is a longer-format translator that's fed by Linguee's first recommendation.

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GreyDude
  • Law Student
13 hours ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

How’s your French? If it’s workable, the Guide fédéral de jurilinguistique législative française (JLF) might help.

The Guide is the Justice Department’s guide for legislative drafting in French, and thus can help with understanding why a piece of legislation may use some terms instead of others. See, for example, the section on whether to use “accord” or “entente” in legislative drafting. 

It’s a federal source so obviously not directly applicable, but legislation tends to be similarly drafted between jurisdictions. 

My French is almost as good as my English (I sputter more in French when I'm angry, and my jokes are worse), and this is extremely helpful! Thanks. I'm definitely keeping it bookmarked. 

 

10 hours ago, Pantalaimon said:

In terms of a quick and dirty english translation of a term (or vice versa), Linguee is quite good because it shows you where a term's been used in pairs of translated english/french documents. DeepL is a longer-format translator that's fed by Linguee's first recommendation.

I like DeepL a lot, and I use Linguee, as well. I especially like the way Linguee gives possible variations based on context, which makes it a lot more useful. I didn't think to use it this time because (1) I wasn't trying to translate anything, but rather trying to understand nuance, and (2) I don't know how some terms are specifically used in law and particularly legislative drafting, which I figured would make it hard to check the various options in Linguee against my general knowledge of French, which is what I would normally do. That said, I just ran a couple of the things that were bugging me through Linguee (now that you have suggested it), and found some uses that might help to clarify one in particular. So ... thanks! I'll think to try this next time. 

Edited by GreyDude
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  • 2 weeks later...
GreyDude
  • Law Student

For anyone who might have been interested in this topic, this evening I discovered a useful resource: "Guide to the English Terminology of the Civil Code of Quebec," published by the Centre Paul-André Crépeau de droit privé et comparé, at McGill. 

https://www.mcgill.ca/centre-crepeau/files/centre-crepeau/guide_to_the_english_terminology_of_the_civil_code_of_quebec_8.pdf

I found it too late for the project that prompted this topic, but here it is, anyway. It's not a list of terms, per se. It's more interesting than that. If you're curious, have a look and you'll see what I mean. 

Edited by GreyDude
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