Código de Procedimiento Civil

I have seen this term so many times it seems that it has been burned into my eyeballs. Whenever I come across terms that appear time and again in the documents I translate, legal or otherwise, I look them up and study the context they appear in. After that, I feel much better when I type them.

Civil procedure is nothing more and nothing less than a set of rules followed by the court in civil trials. Mexican divorce decrees always mention them, usually several times in the same document. Specific articles are referred to as a basis for certain actions and decisions.

Here is a good starting point for learning about the U.S. Code of Civil Procedure.

You can learn more about the Mexican Code of Civil Procedure here.

Legal links and more on Delicious

I had used Delicious some time ago and just recently signed up again. Unlike a links page on a web site, it is easy to update. As for my own use, it is better than a browser Favorites menu, because I can access it from anywhere and add my own comments.

Please feel free to visit my Delicious links page for links to legal, language, translation and software sites.

Legalese: para que tenga verificativo

I love it when I come across words or phrases that sound so important and arcane when they really just mean something simple and mundane. Para que tenga verificativo just means so that it may take place. In other words, tener verificativo means to take place. The first time I ever came across this phrase was in a Mexican divorce decree, and I even asked a KudoZ question about it. The exact phrase was something like "para que la audiencia tenga verificativo".

As a side note: I am definitely not picking on Mexico when quoting this bit of legalese. All countries and languages do it. It is part of being legal. Mexico needs all of our support now with the swine flu outbreak.

¿y?

Such a short word, and yet so vital to communication. I bring it to your attention because it can sometimes go unnoticed and thus untranslated.

¿y? o quizás ¿y qué? o incluso ¿y cuál es el problema? you say...

Well, say you are translating a legal documents from Spain. You come across the inevitable and ubiquitous list of R.D. (Real Decreto). It may say something like "R.D. 1359 del 5 de noviembre de 1983, R.D. 7259 del 4 de mayo de 1974 y R.D. 5867 del 27 de agosto del 1979".

One thing you can do is train your eyes to scan for this type of situation. Another "y" spotting technique is to include a search when you proofread the document. It should be space "y" space. If you put plain "y", Word or the equivalent application will look for every word ending in y.

Dime con quién andas y...

¡Te diré quien eres!

Yesterday, when translating some DIF (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, Mexican Child Welfare Department) papers, I was struck at how important another person's word is when it comes to legal proceedings. As in the everyday world, we rely on other people's opinions about people. All of the service providers we engage for household repairs come from word of mouth. Otherwise, how do you know if someone is trustworthy or good at what he or she does?

I am assigned many DIF documents for adoption purposes. They usually deal with grandparents who want to adopt their grandchildren who live in the United States. In order to bring them to Mexico, DIF must be sure that the grandparents are good people. One way of finding out is through letters of recommendation.

These letters are usually written by important members of the town (these grandparents usually live in a town, not a city) like town council members or doctors. They usually say the same things like such and such a person is honest, hardworking and an upstanding member of the community. They also state how long the letter writer has known this person.

I'll make a note of it!

I am a firm believer of note-taking while translating. It gives me a chance to write about what I am translating without actually including it in the translation itself. This process encourages me to think before typing my final translation in whatever application I may be using.

In the case of MemoQ, there is a handy notes window included in the program. All you have to do is press Control+M and you can write whatever questions or instructions that come to mind. Word also has a notes function, though I am not that pleased with it. First of all, you have to remember to delete your notes before sending the final version to the client. Second of all, it is quite bland in appearance.

That is why I use NoteZilla by Conceptworld. Not only are your notes not restricted to a certain application, you can also choose skins and colors, change the font type and color, and "stick" a note to a particular application. Now, when I do my legal translations in Word, I just create a new note and type all my questions and instructions in it.

Mexican divorce: a woman cannot remarry if she is pregnant.

When I tell Americans that I translate divorce decrees from Mexico and other Latin American countries, they act surprised and say: "But isn't Mexico a Catholic country?" It is indeed, and so is Chile, where I live. Nevertheless, a person's religion alone is sometimes not enough to keep a family together. Even during the time I have lived in Chile, the Church has receded from people's lives, and I suspect that the same has happened in other Latin American countries.

I come across this rule in Mexican divorce decrees almost every week: "Quedan los promoventes en aptitud legal para contraer nuevas nupcias, a excepción de la mujer quien podrá hacerlos hasta que transcurran trescientos días a partir de que cause ejecutoria la presente resolución o mediare examen médico el cual acredite que ésta no se encuentra embarazada, conforme a lo dispuesto por los artículos 146 y 257."

Proof of non-pregnancy is established either by remarrying 300 days (10 months) after the judgment becomes final or by submitting medical test results showing that the ex-wife is not pregnant.

This measure is clearly in order to establish the child's paternity. If the divorced woman remarried while pregnant, there could be serious confusion as to who the child's biological father is.

Commit those terms to memory.

With all the CAT tools and other helpful computer aids in existence, I still rely heavily on my own, human memory for terms and how best to put them together. When I have a free moment, I sometimes use VTrain to commit some important legal terms to memory. It is like virtual flashcards, but customizable and has more steps to it. You create your own deck of cards. Each card has a pair on it. You could decide to have source and target words or an English word and English definition or Spanish word and Spanish definition. Then you feed your stack of cards into different boxes. You have the option of playing a slideshow of your terms so you can learn passively. Then you can set the program up so you are shown the front of the card and you have to type what you think is on the back or vice versa.

I should also mention that VTrain allows you to add audio and images to your cards. All in all, it is a rich and thorough learning experience.

Managing your online legal resources part 2

As I said in part 1, we are bombarded with useful links to glossaries and other reference sites of interest. It is often difficult to keep track of some of them when we most need to access the information. Besides the solution given in part 1,I also like to have websites launch automatically.

This is part of the way I have set up my work environment. I determine which websites I want to view and what time of day and how many days a week I want to view them. That way, I do not make a conscious effort to launch them, they simply appear.

There are two different applications that I like for performing this task. One is called Schedule Wizard and the other is System Scheduler Professional. In addition to launching web pages, there are a number of other tasks that these applications can be scheduled to perform such as launching files and reminding you of appointments.

The Merl Bilingual Law Dictionary

I recently received the Merl Bilingual Law Dictionary in the mail. I find it good to use with Mexican legal documents. It tends to give the shortest and most concise translation, which I like. I also find terms in it that are not in the Varó and Hughes Legal Dictionary or Glosario Internacional.

Another salient feature worth mentioning is that the entries come with detailed explanations of the terms defined. This contributes toward translating ideas and concepts and not just words.

My only misgiving is that some English translations are more like explanations than words or phrases. This could make it hard to use them as is in a translation.

Entidad Federativa a.k.a. State

One thing I love about translating legal documents is that I learn things about countries, people and institutions that I could never have by merely reading newspapers or watching TV.

On Mexican birth and marriage certificates, it is common to see Entidad Federativa which is just an official way of saying State. Now that I am on the subject, I learned that these Entidades Federativas often come with a "first and last name". What I mean is that Michoacán is officially Michoacán de Ocampo. Coahuila is Coahuila de Zaragoza and Veracruz is Veracruz Llave.

Believe it or not, thanks to a birth certificate, I even learned of the existence of an Entidad Federativa that I had never heard of until then: Tlaxcala!

Numbers, leave them as is or adapt them?

Anyone who translates between European Spanish (and some varieties of New World Spanish but not all) knows that a dot is used to separate thousands and a comma to mark a decimal point. This is the opposite of how speakers of U.S. or British English would write these numbers. In other words, the European or Continental way would be: 1.537, whereas the British or U.S. way would be 1,537.

This is clear to me and has become an automatic habit. In fact, MemoQ, with regular expressions, can add this feature to its workflow with a little help from its users. Nevertheless, when it comes to how different languages express the same numbers, things can get tricky. What to me, an American, is one billion Euros is a thousand million Euros to a European.

Because of my uncertainty, I decided to post a question on a ProZ forum.

Off topic - translating tweets on Twitter

I have seen so many references to Twitter on Internet, that I decided to visit the site and get an account. I will be mainly "tweeting" about my translations and translation-related activities. Should you feel like tweeting to (at?) me, my Twitter name is ReedJames.