prêt d’un montant de X en principal

08:38 May 2, 2018 

Point taken, and thanks. It's now gone back. When the para above says "a accordé à xxx un prêt de... ", it's clearly talking about the sum of money which was used to pay towards the cost of the property, whenever that was. The other stuff which is heaped on top (or threatened to be), in the form of interest, admin costs, legal fees, court costs, penalty under Article 700, etc. etc. is described in exquisite (sadistic?) detail later on. I appreciate you don't have sight of the document, and shall continue to search for more definitive proof about how this should be phrased...

08:33 May 2, 2018 

Given the context, I would contend that it is all the more important to explicitly maintain the notion of principal: the individuals in question are being reminded that the amount stated is merely the original amount they borrowed, with inference that there is interest (and possibly other charges, who knows) to be added to that amount to arrive at the full amount owed.

In any event, since there are legal overtones here, I would not presume to remove the explicit reference to "principal" (or, at least, not without running it past the client first).

06:13 May 2, 2018 

It's a bank issuing really nasty warnings to individuals about how much money they owe on property loans. These are in fact "Assignation paiements TGI" delivered in person by a bailiff with the terrifying "Où étant et parlant à :". So, yes, one point is that these are delivered to non-financial-professionals, and efforts are therefore made to write them in frightening but fairly limpid prose: stuff about qualification for legal aid, that kind of thing.

21:26 May 1, 2018 

What is the actual context here – as in, what type of document does this text occur in?