Recently, while drafting an investigation report in French, I surprisingly struggled to find an appropriate way to translate "counter-complaint." In the context of civil litigation, in French, a counterclaim is "une demande reconventionnelle," but a quick internet search also suggests terms such as "contre-plainte" or "contre-recours."
I debated whether I should just follow the internet suggestions. However, after several minutes of staring at the screen on my laptop, I could not bring myself to write "contre-plainte" or "contre-recours" in my report. When I shared this unexpected hiccup with my dear colleague Frédérick Doucet, who is also bilingual, he mentioned that he himself had questioned whether "intimé(e)" was not a better term than "répondant" to describe "a respondent" in French.
As any investigator drafting or reviewing documents in English and French in the course of an investigation will tell you, there is more to translation than finding the equivalent word-for-word of a term. Translation is, above all, finding a term that accurately conveys the meaning. Even for someone whose first language is French, like me, having to conduct investigations mostly in English has now made me less familiar with the French terminology.
This realization, drawn from my unexpected difficulty in trying to find the perfect translation for "counter-complaint," gave me the idea for a blog intended to provide an English to French lexicon of terms commonly (and some less commonly) used in an investigation.
While I don't have the pretension or authority to present this blog as an official dictionary, I hope you will see it as a helpful starting point in your bilingual drafting endeavours. I thank my colleague Frédérick for suggesting and helping translate some of the words below.
For more on the subject, I suggest you read the blog by former RT Workplace Investigator Sophie Martel, which is an excellent resource on the French translations of English gender-neutral pronouns, titled: "Il, elle, iel ou ille? Quel langage neutre utiliser en français? | Gender-neutral language in French, does it exist?"
Finally, I encourage you to visit the following resources which provide French translations of English legal terms. First, for our friends from Québec, the "Centre d'accès à l'information juridique" ("CAIJ") provides free access to the Legal Reid dictionary, a valuable legal English to French translation tool. This resource can be accessed here.
Second, TERMIUM Plus®, a service offered by the Government of Canada, provides translations from English to French for human rights related terminology. Please click here to access this resource.
Finally, Jurisource.ca has released a legal glossary of English to French terms for law practitioners in Ontario. It can be accessed here.
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The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
