dictionaries and terminology

The problems with this French legal dictionary begin on its cover, which labels it as being "Français-Anglais/French-English," implying that it only translates only in one direction, when in fact, it contains both a French-to-English and an English-to-French section. This kind of lack of attention to detail is evident throughout the book: accents are wrong (ètre instead of être on the title page, celà instead of cela in the introduction), as are capitalization (referring to the language as le Français-which means "the Frenchman"-instead of as le français) and punctuation (instructif, utile, et pratique instead of instructif, utile et pratique). In the bibliography, even the title of one of the author's own writings is misspelled (La Facilite sous le Chapitre 11; facilite is apparently meant to be faillite, i.e., bankruptcy).

The dictionary boasts that it is annotated and includes "definitions from codes, case law, statutes and legal writing." Apparently what the compiler did was take selections from various French-language treatises on French law and translate them, very poorly, into English. Thus, on page 8, under the entry acomptes et arrhes (which is translated as "payments on account and earnest"-presumably the author meant to put "earnest money"), we find an explanation that begins like this: "It often happens that the buyer pays to his vendor, at the moment of sale, a more or less large amount towards the price. Such payments on account should be distinguished from earnest properly so-called." Obviously, this is a dreadful translation from a French text. Another example: under acte juridique we read that "most of the legal regulations which exist among men spring from juridical acts." Perhaps one of the worst pieces of gobbledygook in the book can be found under mobilisation du credit foncier, which the author explains like this: "The protecting rules of the civil law which attache [sic] a great value to the security of funds invested in realty makes of the mortgage an instrument of credit a bit difficult to manage." One comes away from entries like these with the sense that the author should have hired a translator and that the publisher should be ashamed for putting a compendium of nonsense like this on the market.
Interspersed among these "encyclopedic" entries are all sorts of filler terms, many of which are not only out of place in a law dictionary, but also very weird. Examples include boire au goulot (to drink straight from the bottle), mère abusive (possessive mother), décérébrer (to lobotomize), abri souterrain (air-raid shelter), cabinet de toilette (dressing room with sink), rayon hommes (men's department), chaînes à neige (tire chains for use in snow), and échelle, être au sommet de l' (to be at the top of the ladder). Obviously, translators do not turn to a legal dictionary for terms like these, and it is hard to even conceive of how they found their way into this book.

And then there is the problem of entries that are completely wrong. For example, Code Napoléon is translated as "Napoleon Code," even though almost any general French dictionary would give you the correct translation: "Napoleonic Code." Contrat synallagmatique et unilatéral, itself a confusing entry, is translated as "reciprocal and unilateral contract," implying that there is such a thing, when in fact, a contract is either synallagmatique or unilatéral. The two terms are opposites, and a contract cannot be both any more than a person can be fat and skinny at the same time. Garde des Sceaux, which refers to the Minister of Justice in France, i.e., the equivalent of the Attorney General in the United States, is simply translated as "Keeper of the Seals" without any further explanation. This is precisely a case where an encyclopedic entry would have been helpful. I would also note that the term Garde des Sceaux is translated correctly in several of my general French-English dictionaries.

Finally, there is the problem of what the dictionary does not include: basic terms from corporate law, such as assemblée spéciale and assemblée mixte; or phraseology from civil procedure that is very difficult to translate, such as statuant avant dire droit and sous toutes réserves dont acte. Instead, the book is filled with poor translations, filler terms, mistranslations, and even encyclopedic entries that provide details that seem completely unnecessary. An example of the latter is the entry under crime commis à l'étranger (crime committed abroad), where the author informs us that "any French citizen who outside the territory of the Republic commits an act qualified as a crime punishable by French law may be prosecuted and judged by the French courts." It is hard to imagine why anyone would need this information, especially since it is fairly obvious.

Does this dictionary have redeeming qualities whatsoever? Well, the encyclopedic entries that the author identifies as having been taken from the book Civil Procedure in France (by Peter Herzog) are excellent-probably because that book was written in English and there was no need to translate the entries before including them in this dictionary. For example, the explanation of tribunal de grande instance taken from that book is very complete and informative. However, given the other enormous problems with Dahl's dictionary, I certainly would not buy it, and would invest my money in Civil Procedure in France instead.