The Termbase Conflict in a Preliminary Reference
You are translating a request for a preliminary ruling from Polish into English. The national court’s order uses 'sąd odsyłający' (referring court), 'pytanie prejudycjalne' (question referred), and 'zawieszenie postępowania' (stay of proceedings). Your termbase gives 'referring court' but a colleague’s draft uses 'requesting court'; the termbase has no entry for 'zawieszenie postępowania'. The order also contains a false friend: 'kontrola' in the phrase 'kontrola zgodności' means 'review of compliance', not 'control'. The text will be published in the Official Journal and read alongside the CJEU’s own English version. You have 48 hours and can query the national court’s translation service, but a reply may take two days. The document is 4,300 words and contains 14 defined terms.
1. Choose between 'referring court' and 'requesting court' for 'sąd odsyłający'. Justify by reference to EU judicial usage and the document’s function.
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Use referring court. In a preliminary reference, the national court is the court that makes the reference to the CJEU; 'referring court' captures that procedural role. 'Requesting court' is not wrong in ordinary English, but it is broader and can suggest a court requesting information or mutual legal assistance rather than making a reference under Article 267 TFEU. Because the document will be published alongside the CJEU’s English version, consistency with the Court’s terminology matters for citability and for automated retrieval. The termbase entry supports 'referring court', and nothing in the context displaces it. If the colleague’s draft uses 'requesting court', change it globally, but check the defined-terms list first so that the change does not create an inconsistent defined term.
2. Propose an English rendering for 'zawieszenie postępowania' and explain how you would signal the procedural effect without adding an explanatory footnote.
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Render it as stay of proceedings - or, where the sentence requires a verb, the proceedings are stayed. In the preliminary-reference context, the national proceedings are stayed pending the CJEU’s ruling; that is a legal effect, not a mere pause. 'Suspension of proceedings' is understandable but less precise as a term of art. Do not add an explanatory footnote in an Official Journal text. Instead, make the effect clear in the sentence itself: 'The proceedings are stayed pending the ruling of the Court of Justice.' If the term recurs, define it once on first use: 'stay of proceedings (hereinafter “the stay”)'. That keeps the register formal and avoids commentary in the published text.
3. You cannot get a reply from the national court before the deadline. What do you do about 'kontrola zgodności' and the missing termbase entries?
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Translate kontrola zgodności as review of compliance (or 'compliance review' if the sentence needs a noun compound), not 'control of compliance'. The context - a national court reviewing whether a measure complies with EU law - supports 'review'. Record the choice and the alternatives in the query log, and add candidate entries for 'zawieszenie postępowania' and 'kontrola zgodności' for terminologist clearance after publication. Do not invent a new defined term that the source does not define, and do not leave the Polish term in the English text unless it is in a bracketed first occurrence. If the CJEU’s English version of a related judgment uses a different rendering, follow that usage for citability, but note the source. The deadline does not justify an unrecorded guess: the query log is the audit trail.