The Unpublished Judgment and the Ambiguous 'Mesures d’instruction'
You are translating a 1,150-word excerpt from a General Court judgment (French into English) for an internal training pack on procedural law. The excerpt discusses the Court’s handling of 'mesures d’instruction' and 'mesures provisoires'. Your termbase returns 'instruction measures' for the first term, but a senior reviser’s marked-up version uses 'measures of inquiry'. The source also contains a footnote citing Article 92 of the Rules of Procedure and a parenthetical '(ci-après les « mesures d’instruction »)'. The deadline is four hours; you have no access to the case file or the French-to-English translation memory because the judgment is unpublished. A colleague suggests adding a translator’s note explaining the procedural distinction. The training pack will be read by lawyers who are not specialists in EU procedural law.
1. Which English term should you use for 'mesures d’instruction' in the body of the excerpt, and how should you handle the parenthetical? Justify your choice by reference to the procedural function and the readership.
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Use measures of inquiry, not the termbase’s literal 'instruction measures'. The procedural function is fact-finding ordered by the Court - expert reports, inspections, requests for information - not the giving of instructions. 'Instruction measures' is a false-friend literal that a non-specialist reader would misread. The reviser’s version is context-sensitive and should prevail over the default termbase entry. For the parenthetical, do not reproduce a source-language definition that defines a French term no longer present in the English sentence. Either delete it or, if the training pack needs to show the original term, put it in square brackets once: '[mesures d’instruction]'. Do not create the circular formulation 'measures of inquiry (hereinafter measures of inquiry)'. Record the termbase conflict so the entry can be corrected after the deadline.
2. Distinguish 'mesures provisoires' from 'mesures d’instruction' and propose English renderings that a non-specialist lawyer can follow.
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The two concepts operate at different stages and for different purposes. Mesures provisoires are urgent interim orders intended to preserve the status quo or prevent serious harm pending the final judgment; mesures d’instruction are evidence-gathering steps that help the Court establish the facts. Render the first as provisional measures and the second as measures of inquiry. Although 'interim measures' is understandable, 'provisional measures' is the safer EU procedural term here and avoids blurring the distinction with national interim relief. In the training pack, add one short sentence of explanation rather than a long footnote: 'Provisional measures preserve the position pending judgment; measures of inquiry establish the facts.' That gives the non-specialist reader the distinction without turning the translation into a commentary.
3. Should you add the translator’s note your colleague suggests? Decide, and draft a two-sentence note if you would include one.
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Do not put a translator’s note in the body of a judgment excerpt that is meant to read as a judgment. A note interrupts the text and may be mistaken for part of the decision. Instead, add a glossary entry at the end of the training pack and flag the termbase conflict. If the pack’s editor insists on a note, keep it outside the translated passage: 'In this excerpt, “measures of inquiry” renders the French “mesures d’instruction” (fact-finding measures), not “instructions” in the generic sense. “Provisional measures” renders “mesures provisoires” (urgent interim orders).' This preserves the distinction for readers while keeping the translated text clean.