The legaltranslators group at Yahoo has yet again received an advertising mail from Translation Directory:
bq. Read more free articles for translators at http://www.TranslationDirectory.com/article_index.htm
with a list of those articles. Most have nothing to do with legal translation, but I had to look at The “Solicitor” – A judicial auxiliary function in the English legal system by A. de Schlichting – Pr. de droit (what is Pr. de droit?). Being a solicitor myself, I was interested to hear I have a judicial function. I love the way they put “Solicitor”, in inverted commas, as if it were dubious. I know those inverted commas are used for emphasis, but that’s not customary in English, is it?
I was slowed down but not stopped when I saw the article was written in French. My headers here may be misleading, but if I wrote an entry in French I would indicate that in the header.
However, I feel I should add some comments to this article.
tous les solicitors ont poursuivi des études universitaires juridiques.
Mais non! I did German at university, not law.
les examens professionnels dans un College of law.
We usually call it le College of Law, not un College of law
peuvent alors être inscrits sur la liste des solicitors (admitted to theRolls).
No, no, no. The Master of the Rolls admits solicitors to the roll (singular). We did have a client once who admitted me to his Rolls, and I must say it was a wonderfully smooth journey.
tout dabord, le solicitor nest pas compétent en matière de plaidoirie (advocacy).
This is a common misunderstanding. Solicitors do masses of advocacy, some of them do nothing else, but all in the lower courts (where the greatest number of trials occur). Some solicitors can even appear in the higher courts nowadays, but there aren’t many of them yet. Some people are told that barristers represent people in court and solicitors don’t. Forget that. The real difference is more like that between a general practitioner – a family doctor – and a specialist. But I do the article an injustice – later this statement is corrected:
Toutefois, le solicitor a le droit de plaider devant des juridictions inférieures telles la Magistrates Court (juridiction répressive inférieure) ou la County Court (tribunal dinstance).
My legal French is not very good so my suspicions about représsive may be wrong, and those about rédiger des actes for drawing up a will.
Pour terminer citons lactivité notariale des solicitors qui leur permet dauthentifier certains actes en tant que notaire (notary public).
This is a rather complex subject. Solicitors can witness signatures. There are various kinds of notaries in England and Wales, some of whom may do more advanced notarial stuff.
Néanmoins, malgré la réforme, on ne peut pas encore parler dune fusion des deux professions.
That’s correct!