Diccionario jurídico español/inglés inglés/español: Dahl's Law Dictionary: an annotated legal dictionary, including authoritative definitions

Rating:
Summary: This Book Is Worth It!
Review: I found this book very useful since it assists the practictioner with the problem of explaining "concepts" that are virtually untranslatable. Though there may be a few quibbles with some of the trsanslation, Dahl does an excellent job of helping to understand concepts. For example, his explanation of "Discovery" and its scope and limits is brilliant. It is a very useful tool to explain such concepts to the non-U.S. person who has little understanding of the complexities of U.S. law. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not the best choice.
Review: The advertising blurbs about this dictionary make it sound very promising indeed. It is "an annotated legal dictionary, including authoritative definitions from codes, case law, statutes, legal writing and legal opinions from attorneys general." Unfortunately, however, it shares many of the problems noted in Dahl's French legal dictionary. Like its French counterpart, the Spanish Dahl suffers from many instances of tortured translation. For example, under "cobro de lo indebido," we read: "If a thing is received when there was no right to claim it and which, through an error, has been unduly delivered, there arises an obligation to restore the same. A person, who in good faith should have accepted a payment of a certain and specified thing not due, shall only be liable for the impairment or loss of the latter and its accessories, in so far [sic] as he may have enriched himself by it." I would wager that most readers, even ones with legal training, would find that definition pretty hard to follow.

Lamentably, this sort of tortured writing is not limited to the Spanish-to-English section. On the English-to-Spanish side, under "insider trading," we find "En USA las computadoras del mercado de valores está diseñada para tratar de interceptar tales maniobras puesto que pueden provocar una catástrofe bursátil." Apparently someone was not paying very close attention to subject-verb agreement here, and completely forgot about the abbreviation "EE.UU." Here's an even worse example, under "substituted performance," which the book translates as "cumplimiento sustituto": Cuando sin culpa de ninguna de las partes las facilidades para atraque, carga o descarga de mercancías fallan o una clase pactada de porteador no puede utilizarse o la forma de entrega acordada se hace imposible desde un punto de vista comercial, pero se dispone de una sustitución razonable, dicha sustitución deberá ser ofrecida formalmente y aceptada. Si la forma o medios pactados de pago fallan por causa de reglamentos domésticos o extranjeros..." Obviously, the author has fallen into the trap of translating the English word "facilities" as "facilidades" and "domestic" as "doméstico." If he makes such basic translation errors as these, can we really rely on anything in his book?

In general, the author's approach is apparently to copy (and often poorly translate) passages from other books that refer to the terms in his dictionary. On the Spanish-to-English side, we find this under "habeas corpus": "In many countries the habeas corpus procedure has been broadened to provide protection not only against bodily restraint and arbitrary imprisonment, but also against violation of the various individual freedoms, such as worship, occupation, inviolability of the home, and so on. It has been used to offer possessory protection against government agencies. Brazil is one of the countries where the habeas corpus is the broadest. There are also more original and remarkably effective legal resorts. One of them, of Mexican origin, is the amparo, of which Mexican jurists are justly proud; the other is the Brazilian procedure mandato de segurança [sic]." I have several quarrels with this explanation: In the first place, "offering possessory protection against government agencies" is not clear English, and in the second place, Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country whose legal institutions are not of immediate concern to translators of Spanish. On top of that, the Brazilian term is misspelled (it's mandado de segurança, with a "d," in Portuguese). Furthermore, this passage doesn't tell translators of legal Spanish what they need to know: "habeas corpus" goes by the name "exhibición personal" in the Central American countries; it is actually called "habeas corpus" in Peruvian law; the Latin term is not used in the legal Spanish of other Spanish-speaking countries.

The dictionary is replete with information that you don't need. Here's a splendid example: "Codificación visigótica. Visi-gothic codification." Under "habilitación para comparecer en juicio," you'll find that "legitimate children not emancipated when not authorized to appear in court by law, must be vested with power therefor by the father or by the mother, if under parental control." Not only is this a sloppily worded definition (how about "unemancipated legitimate children" instead of "legitimate children not emancipated"?), but it is also a fairly self-evident one.

And what of information that you really do need to know? For example, if you're a court interpreter and need to know the basic terminology of criminal procedure, will the Dahl help you? Here are some examples of what you'll find:

arraignment. Auto de procesamiento. But that's not right. An arraignment is not an order (auto).

indictment. Indiciamiento. That's not right either. To my knowledge, there is no Spanish-speaking jurisdiction where "indictment" is "indiciamiento."

plea bargain. Alegación preacordada. That's the term they use in Puerto Rico, but there is no indication in the Dahl that this is a Puerto Rican term.

probation. Libertad bajo fianza, libertad condicional. But the first term actually means "release on bail" (which is not probation), and the second means "parole" (everywhere but in Uruguay).

In short, this dictionary will be of little or no use to professional translators and interpreters (although it could have benefited from their input!). I would not buy it.