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Jul 13, 2017 23:08
6 yrs ago
French term

elle a déclaré

Non-PRO French to English Law/Patents Law (general) declarations - terminology
I am translating a number of interrogations of suspects, held in the chambers of the investigating judge.

Apart from the judge and the suspect, there is the court clerk, the lawyer for the suspect and an interpreter. All of these people are identified on the cover page, along with the charges.

The record of the interrogation is always preceded by the following sentence:

"Après avoir rappelé à ladite personne visée les faits qui lui sont imputés, elle a déclaré ce qui suit:"

Who is "elle" here? The only person who is consistently a "she" in these scenarios is the court clerk. Would she be considered to be the "declarant" in a record of an interrogation?

Obviously I can translate these words, but I am not sure whether a face-value translation is correct or adequate. Thank you for your help.
Proposed translations (English)
4 +2 he/she stated
5 +2 elle = ladite personne = the person giving the statement = a suspect
4 +1 they stated
Change log

Jul 14, 2017 08:54: mchd changed "Level" from "PRO" to "Non-PRO"

Votes to reclassify question as PRO/non-PRO:

Non-PRO (3): Tony M, writeaway, mchd

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Discussion

ph-b (X) Jul 14, 2017:
@ TonyM Fine; you're the native speaker.
Tony M Jul 14, 2017:
@ ph-b Not exactly, because it would be natural in EN to render this as 'after said person had been reminded of, they...' — and I think almost all translators would (as we have done) just read across what is after all, as you say, a blatant grammatical error in the FR!
The point being, it would be so unusual in EN to carry the subject across the sentence boundary, one would instinctively look for the subject of 'declare' within the same sentence...
By the way, I suppose strictly speaking it ought to be 'states'?
ph-b (X) Jul 14, 2017:
@ A/T and Nikki, Are you saying that in the following sentence, 'After having reminded said person of..., 's/he' stated that...', you'd understand 's/he' as referring to the said person? I would understand it it as referring to whoever has reminded the said person. But then I'm not a native speaker and I'd have got my translation wrong. Life is full surprises :-)
Nikki Scott-Despaigne Jul 14, 2017:
@AT I agree entirely. It's as simple as that. In fact, to me it's the obvious answer.
AllegroTrans Jul 14, 2017:
My take is that if the gender of the person is obvious from your document, then you should put "he" or "she" as the case may be.
ph-b (X) Jul 14, 2017:
@ Tony I've deleted my previous answer because I misread your suggestion, which I'm afraid wouldn't work. In my example, I used the impersonal il pronoun to underline what I'd written earlier: the subject should be the same, or at the very least not different. There is another possibility: Après qu'il lui a été rappelé les faits qui lui sont..., la personne visée a déclaré..... You can do away with the impersonal il, in which case you'd have: Après que les faits qui lui sont imputés lui ont été rappelés, la personne visée a déclaré.... But this is a long way from Melissa's question...
ph-b (X) Jul 14, 2017:
In other words, if I were to translate the sentence as shown/drafted, I'd have to write something like: 'After X reminded said person of the facts that said person was accused of, X stated that' and my feeling as a native speaker who's seen his fair share of dodgy French is that it's not what the author intended.
ph-b (X) Jul 14, 2017:
Sloppy French, yet again (Sigh!) No additional context is needed here but the issue is that the subject in each part of the sentence is different, whereas the rule is this case is that the subject should be the same, or at the very least not different.

<p>In Melissa’s text, the first part refers to one person (who ‘reminded’) and the second part refers to someone else (who ‘stated’). Compare with Après avoir vu sa plainte déposée en France classée rapidement, Jean-Marie X... décide de porter l'affaire en Belgique (https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichJuriJudi.do?oldAction=r... In this case, sa refers to J.-M. X, i.e. both parts of the sentence refer to the same person, who first 'learnt/heard' that… and then 'decided' to….

<p>The French should have have been Après qu’il a été rappelé à la(dite) personne visée les faits qui lui sont imputés, celle-ci/cette dernière a déclaré ce qui suit, where il is impersonal (i.e. not a subject strictly speaking) and, obviously, celle-ci refers to the person who has been reminded that… - which makes the whole sentence not only correct, but much clearer too.
Melissa McMahon (asker) Jul 14, 2017:
So the suspect is considered the declarant of the record of his interrogation, even though it contains questions from the judge, lawyer, notes and so on?
Melissa McMahon (asker) Jul 14, 2017:
gender agreement with personne Yes, this occurred to me too, I thought I'd mentioned it but clearly not. In which case it would be "he" here. writeaway, was the gender of the suspect what you were asking about?
AllegroTrans Jul 13, 2017:
"Personne" is feminine But the "personne" here can be male or female, so you must translate accordingly. No additional contxt is needed.
philgoddard Jul 13, 2017:
Actually I don't think more context will help. Yes, it's "la personne", regardless of that person's gender. I've never come across this before, but if you Google the first few words of your sentence, you'll find the first hit is a PDF beginning with these words and referring to the questioning of a man.
writeaway Jul 13, 2017:
Surrounding context (in French) could be useful As it now stands, "elle" seems to refer to ladite personne visée

Proposed translations

+2
39 mins
Selected

he/she stated

See discussion box
Note from asker:
Thanks Allegro, I used "he".
Peer comment(s):
neutral Daryo : fine for an explanation, but in every practical occurrence it should be either a "he" or a "she" // you can't refer to previously named suspect, (either a male or a female) as a "he/she" [the only way to have the same translation for everyone]
12 mins
that is precisely why I gave "he" and "she" as alternatives!!
agree Tony M : Simple enough to use 'they' as a neuter singular pronoun to get round the problem.
7 hrs
Whilst I realise "they" is now in general use, I doubt whether it would be used to report the questioning of a suspect; I think the precision of either "he" or "she" would be retained
agree Nikki Scott-Despaigne
17 hrs
Thank you
neutral ph-b (X) : only if you change the start of the sentence to: 'After being/having been reminded of...,'/or, as Tony said in the discussion, 'after said person had been reminded of', which happens to be what Daryo came up with.
17 hrs
OK but I merely gave my suggestion for the actual words "elle a déclare"
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
+2
46 mins

elle = ladite personne = the person giving the statement = a suspect

ladite personne => this person was identified in the previous part of the text

this person is a suspect => clue: "...les faits qui lui sont imputés"

An important point to clarify:

"une persone" CAN be a man, or a women, or anything in between ... basically any creature that has legal personality, of any sex or gender

the noun "persone" itself is feminine [un nom féminin], but it can refer to any human being.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 hr (2017-07-14 00:09:59 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Après avoir rappelé à ladite personne visée [les faits qui lui sont imputés], elle a déclaré ce qui suit:

=

After being reminded of [...], this person has made a statement as follows:


this way it applies to all suspects, regardless of sex
Note from asker:
Thank you Daryo for your answer and explanations.
Peer comment(s):
neutral AllegroTrans : This is an explanation and should go either in the DBox or the reference box, not here
5 mins
there is a translation also
agree ph-b (X) : with 'After being [or: having been?] reminded..., this person...'/Pity you didn't enter "[After being/having been reminded of...], said/the person [made the following statement]' - that would have made the obvious answer... obvious!
5 hrs
Merci!
agree Tony M
7 hrs
Thanks!
neutral writeaway : this just repeats what others already said /and in Englishy
8 hrs
yes, it's definitely repeating what was said in French ... / if you sayishy so... it must be true?
Something went wrong...
+1
2 hrs

they stated

"Elle" clearly refers back to "ladite personne" (the declarant). Because their gender is unknown, a singular "they" could be used here.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 3 hrs (2017-07-14 02:48:42 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Sure, it's up to you ;) We do use singular "they" in Canadian legislation, though.
Note from asker:
I think the use of the singular "they" is too controversial to be used in this sort of conservative document, but thanks for the suggestion!
Peer comment(s):
agree Tony M : Singullar 'they' is by now acceptable even in formal documents; indeed, in this sort of context, it has been in use for years in EN anyway.
5 hrs
neutral AllegroTrans : I realise "they" is now in general use, but I very much doubt whether it would be used to report the questioning of a suspect; I think the precision of either "he" or "she" would be retained
8 hrs
I see what you mean, but according to the asker this is a stock sentence that precedes each record of interrogation. It might be impractical to have to change this each time depending on the person's gender
neutral writeaway : I wouldn't use/suggest using ' they' in this context
9 hrs
neutral Nikki Scott-Despaigne : I would strongly advise against using "they" here. Whilst used in a number of fairly formal contexts, it is nevertheless an erroneous use of English which I reckon should be kept for spoken situations.
14 hrs
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