Talk:French Constitution of 27 October 1946

In-links

Here are some possible in-links:

Mathglot (talk) 23:48, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

 Done. Mathglot (talk) 02:56, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Merge

One section of this article duplicates the content of the article 1945 French constitutional referendum. They should probably be merged, although conceivably they could be related parent-child per Summary style. Mathglot (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I have responded to this discussion at Talk:1945 French constitutional referendum. Best to keep the discussion in one place IMO. Cheers, Number 57 23:09, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

The thing is, generally a child article is longer. But I have other fish to fry and so does Mathglot (talk · contribs) most likely. I found out why the preamble is important. I don't know how much repetition there is between that article and this one. And being a translation (from the corresponding article at fr.wikipedia) of course the thing is barely sourced. But later for that too, I really need to go. I will do cleanup here later today, Mathglot. Feel free to edit if you want but don't feel like you have plow through wikilinking all this because I have to go. I will get it tonight. I may be able to eliminate quite a bit of repetition. Elinruby (talk) 19:46, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

verb tense, power vs powers (translator notes)

At several points the French original is discussing the implications of the approval (or not, thus conditional tense) of a text that would in 1946 become an ongoing imperative, henceforth. The article uses present tense to narrate the past, an annoying but common characteristic of French wiki articles when the grammar gets complicated. I essentially wrote around this each time that I encountered it, with varying success. I need to review that for consistency, and if anyone has a good formulation in English for what I am trying to express, it would be welcome.

Also, I initially was translating "pouvoirs publiques" as "public power", as in the balance of power, but now that I am further in, I think the author of this article literally means "powers" as in legislative power and executive power. I need to review that for consistency also.

"Projet de loi" occurs several times and could conceivably be a term of art: it means the language of a proposed bill, or its effects. I pretty consistently called this a legislative text or proposed legislation and believe that that is correct, but see below.

Last, the usual disclaimer: I translated the titles of documents and names of agencies literally, but there is sometimes an "official" translation that is different, and the official translation would be the correct one, regardless of whether it is literal or not in my opinion. Elinruby (talk) 14:47, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@Elinruby: to your points:

• projet de loi: in AE, a bill is a proposed law, so just bill by itself would be enough; not sure if that works in BE, so other terms might be draft of a law, a proposed law and so on, if it doesn't.
• pouvoirs publiques: I'd just use the term powers in the context of this article. Most commonly, the term pouvoirs publiques is a loose term that gets translated as the authorities when a writer doesn't want (or need) to state exactly what jurisdiction was involved in some arrest or other action by forces of order, as in these news stories. However in a constitutional context, you're right that the writer means the legislative and executive power, and authorities doesn't work in English for that. The writer still has that desire of talking about constitutional authorities/powers/whatever without actually naming them, just like in the forces of order case. The French term does double duty and works both for the law enforcement context, as well as for the constitutional context, but the authorities in English only works for the former. At the same time, the term public powers doesn't mean anything in English and sounds mysterious. I think the closest we have in English, is just the word powers by itself, when used in a context where it's clear that we're talking about the constitutional allocation of power to governmental structures being created or proposed. Think of terms like, separation of powers (which is sort of separation of branches, or more specifically, authority allocated to the branches, without having to talk about the fact either that there are branches, or which precise branches they might be). I haven't looked at all the individual use cases in this article, and you might have to modify powers if that isn't clear in some particular context, maybe by using expanded terms like powers allocated to the government, governmental powers, institutional powers, or some other formulation but I think it would be better to leave those off and moistly just stick to the simple powers in any context where it's clear that we're talking about the structures being set up by a constitution. Mathglot (talk) 17:38, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

thank you for a thoughtful response "Bill" is a good idea. Elinruby (talk) 12:23, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Still thinking about pouvoirs publiques. How do you feel about "institutions"? This might be the case for moving away from literal translation. I will come back to and read it through for these issues Elinruby (talk) 15:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Graphic

I found it extremely helpful at the fr wiki, but it looks like it has been scaled down? I can't read it on an Android mobile device. However, labels are in French anyway, might be good if someone feels like producing an English version of this chart. Just noting this. Elinruby (talk) 15:22, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

French Wikisource

The link does go to the anchor at Article 98, but this is actually the full text and perhaps should be linked that way since Article 98 is only mentioned in passing? Elinruby (talk) 16:06, 11 March 2021 (UTC)