A comment to the previous entry on legal entity mentions the term juridical person, which gets many ghits, although not all on English or U.S. sites.

Here’s a definition from the OECD site:

A juridical person, in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), means any legal entity duly constituted or otherwise organised under applicable law, whether for profit or otherwise, and whether privately-owned or governmentally-owned, including any corporation, trust, partnership, joint venture, sole proprietorship or association.

That’s a wider definition than that for legal person. Note the use of legal entity in the definition as the broader term.

See also Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of Law:

juridical person n, in the civil law of Louisiana: an entity (as a partnership or corporation) that is given rights and responsibilities – compare NATURAL PERSON

I don’t use this term when translating into English myself, but I would certainly take it as a synonym in context.

I looked at Black’s Legal Dictionary, but I don’t find much clarification there.

The OED has the first usage of juridical person in 1900, whereas juridical in other contexts is cited from 1502.

Looking at the OED for person, I find this sense under 6.a:

A human being (natural person) or body corporate or corporation (artificial person), having rights and duties recognized by the law.
1444 Rolls of Parlt. V. 75/1 And þey [the Master & Brethren of the Hospital] by that same name mowe be persones able to purchase Londez and Tenementz of all manere persones. 1475 Ibid. VI. 150/1 Any persone Temporell, corporat or not corporat. 1704 J. Harris Lex. Techn. I. s.v., A Writ that lies for Prebendaries, or other Spiritual Persons. 1765 Blackstone Comm. I. i. 123 Natural persons are such as the God of nature formed us; artificial are such as are created and devised by human laws for the purposes of society and government; which are called corporations or bodies politic. 1768–74 Tucker Lt. Nat. (1834) II. 188 A crowd is no distinct existence,+but if the same people be erected into a corporation, there is a new existence superadded; and they become a person in law capable to sue and be sued [etc.]. 1833 Act. 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 74 §1 The word ‘Person’ shall extend to a Body Politic, Corporate, or Collegiate, as well as an Individual.

6.b is Euphemistically, the genitals.

1824 Act 5 Geo. IV c. 83 §4 Every Person wilfully, openly, lewdly and obscenely exposing his Person in any Street, Road or public Highway, or in View thereof, or in any place of public Resort, with intent to insult any Female+, shall be deemed a Rogue and Vagabond within the true Intent and Meaning of this Act.

Legal entity has two possible meanings for me, summed up by Wikipedia:

The term legal entity is sometimes used:
* to refer to a juristic person, an artificial entity that the law treats for some purposes as if it were a person, such as an incorporated organization.
* as a general term to describe all entities recognized by the law, including both juristic and natural persons.

What is called a juristic person is also called a legal person, an artificial person or a corporation (I use British English unless otherwise indicated). Company law books often write of corporate personality (this may be corporate personhood in the USA, since Wikipedia also tells me that corporate personality is another term for multiple personality disorder, which sounds more like a partnership than a company).

The first meaning would include a private or public limited company, a GmbH, an AG.
The second meaning would include all those, but also natural persons, and even groups of persons such as partnerships.

The context should make the meaning clear, however.

This old ProZ question on translating legal entity into German illustrates the pitfalls of legal translation:

Ein schöner Ausdruck! Reicht aus, hier von einer “Unternehmung” zu sprechen?
Company code (Buchungskreis): this is a legal entity to which accounting data refers. There are three company codes:
A010 Aniello Entsorgungswerke
A020 Aniello Klärwerke
A610 Aniello Dienstleistungen

The name ‘Aniello’ was just a pseudonym for these entities. I suspect myself the term was used in the second sense. But no-one even asked whether these were companies or partnerships – they may have been municipal corporations – and yet juristische Personen was the answer selected (still, it only got 3 points out of the possible 4!).

However, I can’t help thinking Volkmar Hirantner’s suggestion of Mandanten was spot-on. Mandant is a term used in accounting – for instance, if your accounting software is mandantenfähig (multi-client-capable? multi-user-enabled?), you can use it for more than one of your clients.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons why we don’t rely on dictionaries.

Fürther Freiheit last Friday.

Under the heading Oh Gott in Frankreich, Ullrich Fichtner writes in Der Spiegel (my emphasis):

Ach, Frankreich! Im Land der kulinarischen Weltmeister ist Verfall im Verzug: Käsemacher geben auf, Bauernhöfe werden still gelegt, in den Supermärkten herrscht der Fertigfraß. Und wer hat Schuld an der Misere? Wir selbst, die Amerikaner und die “Desperate Housewives”.

(found on a mailing list)

Sandwich art

(Via Boing Boing)

João Roque Dias announces a conference in Lisbon from 19 – 20 October 2007. Conference website Portuguese, English.

If you can’t get to the conference, don’t miss his website.

There are a large number of talks and workshops, including a legal translation workshop by one Mark Robertson, of whom it is said that he ‘holds a Degree In Sociology from the University of Essex (UK) and a Degree in Law from the College of Law (Chester, UK). Mark has been admitted to the Roll of Solicitors in 1981 and practiced law in England between 1980 and 1987. Founded and is the managing partner of Juízos de Valor Lda., a Lisbon-based company providing expert legal translations, language lessons, legal training and language consultancy services to some leading Portuguese and foreign law firms. Mark is currently co-authoring a Portuguese-English-Portuguese Encyclopaedic Law Dictionary.’

Incidentally, the ITI has for a long time now had on its website – open to non-members – an international calendar of translation events. Please enter your events there, then we’ll all know where to find them (the Lisbon conference is already in there). To see the calendar on the ITI site, click on the title just to the right of the brilliant ‘Welcome to our Home Page’.