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This question was closed without grading. Reason: No acceptable answer
Feb 9, 2015 20:53
9 yrs ago
Spanish term

el hacer

Spanish Law/Patents Law: Contract(s) service agreement
My question is more properly one of grammar. I'm verifying the accuracy of a translation done by another party, of a contract for a service agreement. The sentence I'm looking at askance is the following:

el hacer representaciones falsas y el no divulgar información pudiera anular los servicios que recibo

The document was translated from US English to US Spanish, and what I want to know is if it is standard practice to use the article with the infinitive verb in legal documents in US Spanish. I know this construction is grammatically possible (or at least it used to be, decades ago), it is just so rare any more that it sounds very strange to me, and I'm debating correcting it or leaving it as is.

Any advice is much appreciated, as legalese is NOT my first language...
Change log

Feb 9, 2015 21:36: philgoddard changed "Language pair" from "Spanish to English" to "Spanish"

Discussion

Linda Grabner (asker) Feb 10, 2015:
@Andy Thanks, Andy. What I really had in mind was simply deleting the articles and leaving the infinitives: hacer representaciones falsas y no divulgar informacion (sorry, laptop, no tildes...). But I didn't want to do that just because they sounded odd to me, if it turns out that the construction is accepted legalese. On the other hand, this isn't like a bank contract or something super-official like that. It's more like the kind of agreement you might sign for a service like Netflix or the Geek Squad at Best Buy, or something like that. So overall, the Spanish translation actually comes across as more "legalese" than the English original -- for what that's worth.
Andy Watkinson Feb 10, 2015:
Hi Linda
My knowledge of US legal Spanish is zero. However, I've translated and read many LatAm Spanish legal documents (which I imagine is the main influence on US Spanish) which, at least in this respect, were no different to any other. I wouldn't say it's rarely used construction.
" el hacer representaciones falsas y el no divulgar información pudiera anular los servicios que recibo"
In the first instance, I don't think you have a choice, beyond replacing "hacer" with "realizar", e.g.
In the second, "la no divulgación" is a possibility, but then the phrase loses its symmetry, of course. Cuestión de colores......
Linda Grabner (asker) Feb 10, 2015:
@Charles Thanks, Charles, it looks like Phil Goddard already took care of that for me.
Charles Davis Feb 9, 2015:
@Linda I would say it sounds a little old-fashioned in Spain, at least in ordinary speech, but that's not what you want to know. This is quite a specialized question and I would advise you to post it as Spanish>Spanish, or at least as English>Spanish, because ideally what you want are the views of linguistically aware US English>Spanish legal translators, and they may not look at Spanish>English questions.
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