Capitalized terms = 大写术语？

http://www.liverpoolairport.com/about-us/general-conditions-of-contract.html

General Conditions of Contract

1. In these Conditions, unless the context otherwise requires,

(a) "Group" means PEEL HOLDINGS GROUP including any company in the same group (as defined in Section 53 of the Companies Act, 1989) as PEEL HOLDINGS (GUERNSEY) LTD;
(b) "the Order" means the order (and any special conditions attached thereto or referred to therein) to which these Conditions relate;
(c) "Company" means the person to whom the Order is addressed;
(d) "Goods" means the equipment, goods, materials or other articles (if any) described or otherwise identified in the Order; and
(e) "Services" means the work (if any) described or otherwise identified in the Order.

wherestip wrote:

>>> Unless otherwise defined herein, all capitalized terms shall have the meanings ascribed in the Agreement.

依我看这句话作为法律文件本身就不够严谨, 因为句子打头的字词并不一定含有文件所指的特殊定义, 比如句子本身开头的 "Unless".

nigerose wrote:




Unless是词语，不是术语（terms）。

wherestip wrote:



Well, perhaps that's true in this case.


A "non-technical term" is one usage where "term" has the same meaning as a "word". So I wasn't differentiating between the two when I made my comments.

nigerose wrote:



这里term的意思是: （金山词霸）
A word or group of words having a particular meaning:
专用名词一个或一组具有特殊意义的词：
had to explain the term gridlock.
必须解释gridlock（交通全面大堵塞）这个词

不一定是technical term
但它与一般的词语如unless还是不同的。

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/term

term   /tɜrm/ Show Spelled[turm]
–noun

2.any word or group of words considered as a member of a construction or utterance.

wherestip wrote:

Yes, I agree. There is a difference between "term" and "word" in this context. "Unless" typically is not considered a "term" in this kind of legal documentation; so that is my mistake.

The two terms "term" and "word" are frequently synonymous in everyday use though. It kind of caused me to overlook the difference in this situation. See the definition below ...





[Edited at 2010-03-02 04:38 GMT]

nigerose wrote:




“term”在金山词霸中《美国传统辞典》（双解）有两个相似但实际上不相同的词义：

1.
A word or group of words having a particular meaning:
专用名词一个或一组具有特殊意义的词：
had to explain the term gridlock.
必须解释gridlock（交通全面大堵塞）这个词

2.
Language of a certain kind; chosen words:
词语某种语言；选用的词：
spoke in rather vague terms; praised him in glowing terms.
用相当隐晦的词讲述；用炫丽的词语称赞他

可以分别对应于金山词霸中的《现代英汉综合大词典》释义：
(特定意义的)专门名词术语; 措辞; 说法

楼主讨论的其实就是“(特定意义的)专门名词术语”

普通词语经定义（defined），也能变成term，这是局部性或者临时性的术语。楼主讨论的对象大概就属于这种情况。

而一些术语尤其是科学术语，比如胰岛素、脱氧核糖核酸，是具有严格定义的全世界通用的术语，在文章中不用capitalized，但它们还是terms，是一种特殊的words。

[修改时间: 2010-03-02 04:56 GMT]

wherestip wrote:

Here's a legal document that does contain such a statement. The document goes to extreme lengths to define numerous terms, which also are referred to aggregately as "capitalized terms". In this case, there is no confusion as to which of the capitalized terms should "have the meanings ascribed in the Agreement". In other words, if an otherwise capitalized word has not been specially treated or defined in some manner in the Agreement, then it doesn't belong in this group. Therefore the sentence is perfectly unambiguous and definite within the context.

http://www.techagreements.com/agreement-preview.aspx?num=530317&title=Fairfield%20Communities%20-%20Title%20Clearing%20Agreement

Also keep in mind, this sentence is stated in an "Amendment" to an original "Agreement". I would think the original Agreement would have defined the said "capitalized terms" ad nauseam. It should be self-evident as to which terms the statement refers to with all the original English documents available.

Particularly, for the above example, the statement refers to "ALL" the English terms/words with leading capitalized letters, excluding words capitalized with initial letters solely for the purpose of opening a sentence. The latter in turn may or may not fall into the intended category, depending on whether a definition of the term(s) was spelled out in the original Agreement.

In my opinion, it would be difficult, not to mention misleading, to express all the implicit meaning associated with the term "capitalized terms" used in this context with a simple Chinese phrase such as "大写术语", or even with a more elaborately-worded sentence, unless one resorts to footnotes. Yes, one solution would be to rely on style formatting such as the use of boldface type, italic fonts, quotation marks, or underscoring. In which case the responsibility of identifying those terms would fall on the translator handling the translation - IMO not an enviable position to put oneself into from a legal standpoint.

On the other hand, there is always the original English document(s) that prevails if something does go wrong and ends up in litigation, although I say chances of that happening should be extremely slim.


[Edited at 2010-03-01 23:05 GMT]

Crystal Jiang wrote:

I raised this topic for doubt in how to translate the phrase "capitalized terms". It will be strange to translate it as "大写术语" because there will be no capitalized Chinese in the target document. Shall we transform it into "带下划线的术语" if those real capitalized terms in English are translated into Chinese and are underscored.

What kind of solution can clarify the denotion of "capitalized terms" without changing any format?
How to justify translation of the phrase "capitalized terms" itself if formatting is changed?
To what extent this reflects difference between English and Chinese languages in format-meaning relation, or reflects difference between English and Chinese legal documents?

wherestip wrote:

Crystal,

If you're careful in picking out which terms to underscore, there really shouldn't be any legal consequences to speak of. It's just a method to identify terms that have special meanings in the Agreement anyway, similar to capitalizing a term in the English language.

Another way I can think of is to translate the term "captialized term" as is, preferably more clearly than just "大写术语", "英文首写字母为大写的专门术语" perhaps? Other posters had also made some good suggestions previously along these lines. If it were me, I'd go a step further and put the terms in parentheses following the Chinese, for example, 公司 (the Company), 协定(the Agreement), etc..

pkchan wrote:

“Creating SMART Goals”，這個 SAMART 字又怎樣處理為高明呢，想聽聽同仁的意見。SMART = Specific，
Measurable，Attainable，Realistic，Timely 。





[修改时间: 2010-03-03 19:46 GMT]