Book Description

French Business Law in Translation sets forth a unique collection of translations of those French laws relevant in an international business context. It presents a bilingual version of the French laws and regulations that the authors have condensed from tens of thousands of pages down to the “essence” of the law in each of the fifteen subject areas. They refer to rules and regulations in French law of recurrent importance to business professionals and legal practitioners involved in international business. By adding the relevant French text in a column directly across from the translation into English, this 2nd edition has a whole new dimension which makes it an invaluable resource in legal linguistics for international practitioners and academics. The selection of texts has been made by members of the Paris office of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker (Europe) LLP, under the direction of Pierre Kirch. A team of advanced French and American law students at Columbia University Law School, supervised by Professor Bermann, has prepared the basic translations. The definitive translations and chapter introductions were prepared by the authors. Through a sound translation of the legislation which recurringly applies to ordinary and usual business situations, it is possible to discern the philosophy underlying the French system, reflective of how France conceives and regulates business phenomena that are in themselves essentially universal. Significant excerpts of fast-evolving areas of the law have been translated because in a French setting, transactional work involves not only fundamental contractual concepts set out in the Civil Code, but also securities law, intellectual property, competition, tax and labor law considerations. Each chapter opens with a brief introduction to the subject and an outline of its contents. The purpose is to allow the reader to place the translated legislation and rules in their overall context. The selection of translated material is done in such a way as to enable the reader to appreciate in their full scope the fundamentals of each area of the law, as conceived by the legislator, the French Government and, in certain cases, independent regulatory authorities. A glossary added to each chapter is intended to give a preliminary idea of the conceptual linguistic tools used in each of the subject-area chapters. Legal translation is not an exact science, but based on the authors' combined experience of more than 50 years in dealing with the fascinating differences between French law and U.S. law, they are keenly aware of the fact that the translation of legal language is not made by the translation of words, but rather by an attempt to use words to achieve an (often rough) equivalence of concepts. By putting the French original across from the translation, and by investing themselves in the qualitative value of seeking not words but conceptual equivalents or explanations for the rules of French law, they hope to have fostered a deeper understanding of the laws and regulations governing business in France. This should not only better inform those lawyers involved internationally but also be instructive to French lawyers interested in the recurrent linguistic characteristics of French legal texts. This can only be shown when the French original is compared with the appropriate conceptual link to American legal English.