Translating the French Civil Code : Politics, Linguistics and Legislation

The close of 2004 gave rise to as sharp controversy about French Law, namely ils Cival Law. On the one hand, the French were celebrating the bicentennial of the Civil Code, placing emphasis on its flexibility and its adaptability to new economic models. On the other hand, a report of the World Bank concluded that the French Legel System was deterring business, the enforcement of contracts being quite difficult to manage in French Law. The French disputed the accuracy of the methods and data used in this report, correctly assuming there were many materials errors. They argued that the political purpose of this report was to promote Common Law systems at a moment when the evaluation of legal systems had become a customary method chosen by developing countries seeking to reform their own legal systems. Therefore, the dissemination of an accurate perception of foreign legal systems has gained crucial importance. in order to "benchmark" legal systems, one has to understand them properly. Translations of foreign legal texts, provided they are reliable, are therefore a very useful tool for comparison and choice. The choice may well be that of a government seeking legislative models in foreign legal systems, or it may well be that of a lawyer drafting an international contract and wondering which choice of law clause he should recommended to his client.