Toilettage of texts

I suppose we are still getting words from French. The toilettage of texts isn’t what blocks up the drain. To quote the Sugar Traders Association (look, no apostrophe – hope Lynne Truss doesn’t see this – I think it’s a good idea to omit apostrophes in names of institutions like this):

bq. 30 May 2001 – Details of EU sugar regime compromise have been published on Europa’s RAPID database. Now the sugar regime has been agreed, the legislation will be tidied up (“toilettage”) by the SCA at their meetings on 6th and 12th June, adopted as an “A” point at the Farm Council on 18th June and shortly afterwards published in the Official Journal as a Council Regulation.

BBC News picks it up too:

bq. And before we get there, the legal texts have to be translated and double-checked in a myriad of languages – a process given the faintly unpleasant name of toilettage, or cleaning-up.

In French itself, in face, toilettage appears to mean grooming a dog.

2 thoughts on “Toilettage of texts

  1. Hope that doesn’t catch on Margaret. I think clean-up is a far more apt term as it describes the process perfectly. Particularly with respect to Trados which, though I thankfully do not use it myself, apparently creates a filthy mess. The term could be used to baffle customers on invoices of course.

  2. I don’t use Trados, so I’ve never cleaned up. Surely there is a difference from cleaning up legal texts and cleaning a Trados file? But perhaps this is a euphemism. Of course, the customers could be very baffled (if they aren’t already).

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