Talk:Natural person in French law

Translating the Napoleonic system into common law

@Mathglot: your thoughts on this are very welcome. The French page that *rights" links to for example says that this is a fundamental concept of civil law, so it should be linked and until we translate that page.this seems like the best way. I don't want to redlink it, as there are already a lot of ILLs and putting one here would helpfully link it to the page on this in *common* law. Similarly, wikilinking "legal fiction" would send the reader to a page that says that the concept pretty much doesn't exist outside of common law, arg. I haven't looked at the French yet to determine the differences, but they likely are substantial (or the en.wikipedia article is wrong). Going to scroll through the links to make sure they each are the best I can make them but it's kind of scary to enunciate the basis of human rights as seen by the people who wrote the book on the modern democracy, so please check me. And yup buddy this is a lot of articles to translate. Elinruby (talk) 11:57, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Note to self and others: "natural person" came from Wikipedia somehow when I clicked the redlink, verify the English meaning of this. French corresponds to common meaning of a person who has a body, is an adult, and doesn't have a mental incapacity of some kind, etc. Elinruby (talk) 13:54, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: It needs a WP:LEADSENTENCE that clearly defines what a natural person is, and that preferably begins: "A natural person in French law is a ...". I searched for "personne naturelle" and didn't find anything obvious. Where did you find the term?

P.S., I had the same problem with all those links, so in order to try and gauge the scope of the problem, I thought to myself, "Time for a nav template." Starting with the treasure trove of French articles linked from fr:Modèle:Palette Droit pénal français, I created Draft:Template French criminal law, but it's pretty raw still as it's brand new. It's also full of red links, and will likely stay that way for the foreseeable future, but it's also a one-stop shop for finding what other articles exist in fr-wiki, that we ought to have here as well, and a measure of progress, as we see more blue, and less red as time goes on. Mathglot (talk) 11:28, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I did go through the wikilinks and although I think that in general we should use ILLs rather than the ":fr:" format, when the former produces erroneous results, I guess we gotta use the latter. I strongly suspect this article may need to be moved. Probably the same sort of erroneous redirect somewhere that is causing the ILL problem. A story to illustrate: I once used the term 'enfant naturel' when trying to explain that a certain family had an adopted child and another to whom the mother had given birth. I got a very shocked reaction, as if I had broken some sort of taboo. Turns out that 'enfant naturel' means a child born out of wedlock. I will work on this terminology and the lede sentence, but I will be very tied up today and possibly for the rest of the week. While I am thinking of it, meanwhile, this concept is not akin to citizenship rights that a felon may lose. More like Les droits de l'homme, always there even if in the case of freedom for example they may be superceded for some reason which must meet the standard of légalité. I left the wikilinks correct according to me, the extent that they go to English where that seems right and French where there seems to be a redirect problem. I may be intermittently around for purposes of checking wiki messages or perhaps some relatively mindless ce while waiting for buses or whatever. Elinruby (talk) 14:31, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: Okay, I see where you got it from: it's in the last sentence of the lead of fr:Personne physique, which reads:

Dans les juridictions de common law on parle de natural person (littéralement, « personne naturelle »).

It's unsourced, and the French article fr:Common law does not contain the term, and, perhaps oddly, neither does the longer English article, Common law. But the the article Natural person exists at en-wiki, and it's been linked to the French article fr:Personne physique via Wikidata item Q154954, via some bot that created the linkage between en-wiki "Natural person" and fr-wiki "Personne physique" (and a couple dozen other languages) in the original version in 2012. Wikidata pays notoriously lax attention to verifiability, and in 2012 even less so; and who knows where d:MerlIwBot (talk · contribs) scraped this information from; perhaps bot operator de:Merlissimo (talk · contribs) can provide some insight about that. But at en-wiki if we're going to treat the terms as rough equivalents, then it should be backed by the majority of secondary sources.

I'm no legal expert, but I think we have to be careful when trying to align terms in common law and French law which are very likely not to align perfectly, even if each term is sometimes used to translate the other in the respective languages. Sometimes, there is no good solution, or an English translated term is more aligned with a familiar, but different concept in common law where use of the English term to translate a French concept would bring a bunch of baggage from Anglo-Saxon judicial history to mind where it doesn't belong, so we have little choice but to use the French term (or to find another English term supported by the sources). Another confusing case, is where the same word is used in both languages, but the meanings are not the same, such as with Crime and fr:Crime, and we need to use italics, explanatory footnotes, and/or links to articles with longer names at en-wiki that make the difference clear, such as (red, currently): Crime in French law.

It's a recurring problem that does, and will, bedevil all our articles about French law (and fr-wiki's articles about common law). I don't have any magic or easy solution here, and there isn't likely to be one; I think we need to just step carefully, examine each term case-by-case, and see how secondary sources in English handle concepts of French law, and then try to follow the majority view (if there is one), while taking care to add the French term in parentheses the first time. The way we approached the OCW articles that referred to terms in Brazilian law may provide a guide.

P.S., let me know if you're subscribed, and I'll stop pinging. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 19:46, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I will subscribe. I think I have to switch to desktop mode to do that Don't worry about pinging though, I am following, as I turn out to be a little less preoccupied today than I thought I would be. I have been answering the NPP attempt to move the attempt to move the légalité article to Principle of Legality, an instance of exactly what you are talking about.... Elinruby (talk) 20:09, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

PS: I just read Natural person and while IANAL and have not read the entire French article, I I am reasonably satisfied that this aligns, at least to the point where we can go with what currently exists, at least for now pending input from people who know better Elinruby (talk) 22:56, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me; I can go with that. If it becomes an issue down the road, somebody will raise a discussion about it. Mathglot (talk) 23:00, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Fun fact

"Droit" = right = law. And also means "right" as in right turn, btw Elinruby (talk) 12:00, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

And another fun fact: maladroit rather than meaning "wrong", means "awkward". Mathglot (talk) 09:22, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

More fun with language drift: "statut" means "status" not "statute" Elinruby (talk) 05:19, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Natural person

The article Natural person is already connected to French article fr:Personne physique via wikidata d:Q154954). Not sure what that means for this article; maybe a merge? Mathglot (talk) 06:39, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Mmmm.... I will reread the affected articles. Seems to me that there was alignment in that the terms mean a person who has a body, ie is not a corporation or other organization, and specifically under French law not excluding felons or serfs or slaves. Not sure if this is true of legal systems. I will take a look but probably not immediately. I sprained my knee and caught bronchitis on my recent travels, and while I am not in terrible shape, I have been prescribed large doses of codeine so I am sleeping a lot and question my current capability for abstract thought. But isn't the original I am translating from a child article of personne physique in the first place? Elinruby (talk) 02:54, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Get well and clear your head. We can talk about it later. Meanwhile, in related developments, I've started Administrative police (France), Judicial police (France), and am slowly improving French criminal law and {{French criminal law}}. Mathglot (talk) 11:31, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

ok but for this article I am translating from Personne physique en droit pénal français not the parent article Personne physique that is already linked, is what I am saying. Still on antibiotics and codeine but having slept since Tuesday, I'm amusing myself with a little light copyediting. Not tackling this yet though, as it's tangled when I'm three expressos deep :) and has already waited this long, lol Elinruby (talk) 05:57, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the update; no worries, take it as slow as you need to. Yah, I figured out which one you were translating, so I've linked it through Wikidata to the French article (the link is in the left sidebar now). I also added an {{Expand French}} header to the top, not because you don't know it needs translating, lol, but because if you unroll the instructions, the middle bullet has the exact statement needed for translation attribution in the edit summary: you can copy the text right out of the templae and into the edit summary and it will be right. Mathglot (talk) 07:04, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

mmmm ok. Elinruby (talk) 08:31, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

"yeah it was "en droit français" not "en droit pénal français" like I said, you connected it right. Came in here to complain about "law of persons", which does not exist in English. Specifically not the same as human rights, according to the French, possibly, according to Google, translatable as "personal rights", but I am not at this point signing onto this and will for now stick to "law of persons". Comes with its own navbar in French. Elinruby (talk) 09:32, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Comment on pronouns

Of course not all slaves were men. I welcome suggestions on rewording; this was the only way I could enunciate this at the time. Elinruby (talk) 10:22, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

contubernium

More fun with language drift: The French offers this as a synonym for "concubinage" but although the etymology is indeed "tenting-together", the meaning of the term that has an en-wikipedia page has to do with a military unit, so leaving it in is confusing and explains not a thing; therefore deleting this parenthesis. Elinruby (talk) 10:29, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Need material on French serfdom

French article skips over it with a handwave: things did not get much better, more or less. Following section is about the "Code noir", basically slave law in French colonies. I have never heard this term used and need to see if somebody has written an article about this on English Wikipedia.Elinruby (talk) 11:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)Elinruby (talk) 11:27, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

it does, and it's pretty good too. However it is capitalized "Code Noir" which is neither French nor Wikipedia style. Thoughts? Should I move it? Elinruby (talk) 19:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

for some reason it says I cannot move Code Noir to Code noir. Possibly an existing redirect? Elinruby (talk) 04:28, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

yeah Code noir redirects to Code Noir. Is there any universe in which this is correct? I guess the person who did this was following English capitalization rules for the name of a document? Elinruby (talk) 01:43, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Methinks fr.wikipedia gives the Church too much credit

From the section on Code Noir: "It was the first text of this type since the Christian councils of the 6th century, which saw a de facto abolition of slavery." Elinruby (talk) 13:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

It is true than the Councils of Orleans proposed various measures that protected slaves, such as a right to sanctuary. However, this is a sweeping statement that I have not been able to substantiate, and I don't think it is important enough to add up all the various measures to see if they amount to a de facto abolition of slavery -- especially not de facto, or what was Louis XIV doing regulating it a thousand years later? If somebody feels strongly about this I suppose it can go back in, provided it is properly sourced. But I personally don't think it can be. Elinruby (talk) 13:59, 11 December 2022 (UTC)