Talk:Vichy anti-Jewish legislation

Moved and fixed lead sentence

The former title of this article is based on an incorrect translation of the French Statut des Juifs which simply means "Status of Jews" in English, not Statutes on Jews. (I don't want to get into a whole language lesson here about this, but look up False friends if you don't understand why this is so.) I've moved the title to be a reasonable rendition of the French article title Lois sur le statut des Juifs du régime de Vichy into English as Vichy laws on the status of Jews. (The word 'regime' is superfluous in the context of Vichy laws and Jews, and shorter is better.)

Making things worse, someone who evidently doesn't know any French came along in 2007 and made an edit to the lead that altered the WP:LEADSENTENCE to specifically call out the fact that the title "Statutes on Jews" comes from the French "Statuts des Juifs" which is complete rubbish, thus compounding the error. I've fixed the lead sentence to reflect reality.

It's rather disturbing that a bogus translation added by someone editing nine years ago could have survived this long. Mathglot (talk) 09:52, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

You're not totally right about the translation of the term "statut". If I understand it correctly, the concept of the "statute" doesn't exist in French in the same way it does in English because the US/UK use the term as a counterpoint to common law which obviously doesn't exist in continental Europe. That is why loi or législation are more common in French writing than the use of "statute" would be in English. However, that doesn't mean that the term "statut" never has that meaning in French - you can certainly talk about a livre des statuts in reference to a "statute book", for example. I would say that the term "Statut des Juifs" (why, by the way, is pretty standard as a common name in French) would be read as "Statute on Jews" (see here, page 3 for an example) but I fully agree that "Lois sur le statut des juifs" would read better as "Law on the Status of Jews" if that is indeed the legislation's full title. Personally I'm not opposed to the move anyway - though perhaps a title like "Vichy anti-Jewish legislation" might be helpful in bringing in other laws of the period too. As a rule of thumb though, I'd recommend not referring to other users' work as "complete rubbish" in any context.—Brigade Piron (talk) 12:06, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

"Vichy anti-Jewish legislation" would be fine, since that's another way of describing what this article is about, and I would have no objection to it. Just plain, "Statutes on Jews" is not fine, firstly, because there were statutes on Jews in other times and other places (e.g. under Constantine in the 4th century), and secondly because of the mistranslation of the title of the French article. Even "Statutes on Jews under Vichy" or some such would be acceptable because English "statute" is perfectly acceptable as a translation of "loi" but I'd avoid it precisely to avoid the kind of misdirection caused by the false friend status of statut/status which has already confused others here.

I really didn't want to get into a discussion of the finer points of French-English translation, but if you're a French bilingual (or any sort of bilingual) you know that words rarely have a single translation, and may have many meanings, in different contexts as well as change over time. Yes, in some circumstances, it can be "statute", but the main sense is "status" and in THIS case, which is about how to properly render the title of the English article, when taking into considering the French "Lois sur le statut des Juifs du régime de Vichy" it should be perfectly obvious that it means "status", otherwise you have a redundancy like "laws on the statute of Jews". Furthering the confusion, the French article uses the word both ways in the lead sentence. And Paxton is great, but talking about the 1940 "Statut des Juifs" is like talking about the 1973 "Roe v. Wade"—one just drops the word "law" or "decision" because it's obvious in context; i.e., it's the "[1940] Status of Jews". And the last clue is the use of the preposition "de" rather than "sur"; since if you wish to argue for the use of "statute" here, then you have "Statutes of Jews". In history, there have been "statutes of Jews", e.g., in Iberia and the Russian Empire, there were Jewish communities with the right to pass their own laws, so in English we would likely say "laws (or statutes) of the Jews" for that, and "Laws (or Statutes) on the Jews" for the kingdoms' laws concerning them. (Usually in English with sovereign nationalities we would invert the phrase and elide the preposition, "French laws", "Israeli laws" but since Jews were not sovereign and had no territory, and since the expression "Jewish laws" has a specific religious sense, I'm pretty sure a reasonable editor would go with "laws of the Jews" here.) This strongly implies the reading "status of Jews" for "statut des Juifs" as you'd have to explain why "statute on Jews" would be a better reading in English given that "statut sur les juifs" could have been chosen in the original, but wasn't.

But getting into all these fine points will only confuse those who don't have a pretty good command of both languages, and I'd really rather avoid it here, although it could be moved to some French-English project or translation page, if such exists, and discussed there. Feel free to address me on my talk page if there isn't one and you need a forum for it.

I'm really only interested in improving the article, and the rename does that. I don't know if there's marginal value in retaining a rough equivalency in titles across Wikipedia languages, but considering various translation possibilities (including your suggestion) as rough equivalents, I chose to view the French article as "primary" in some sense, and gave a little more weight among equals to their title formulation, which is why I went with the choice that I did. If you prefer "Vichy anti-Jewish legislation" instead, go for it— it's just as good, imho. Mathglot (talk) 19:53, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not interested in a discussion of the language either (although I'm really not sure about the points you make - de, in particular, can mean "on" such as, for example, De l'âme or "On the Soul" by Aristotle) but since you make no objection to "Vichy anti-Jewish legislation", let's try that.—Brigade Piron (talk) 21:49, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Your move is fine (although in retrospect, I'm wondering about differences between anti-Jewish and antisemitic, but that's maybe another conversation for another time; perhaps already settled in a WP guideline somewhere).

However, your change to the lead paragraph is not fine, and I reverted it, as it's precisely what is under discussion here. Actually, most of what you changed is okay, except for the status/statute issue at hand here. Thank you for adding the file with Petain's markings on it, as it proves my point: So, in this case, you want "Statut des Juifs" to be "Statute[s] on Jews" as your edit here would have it? All righty then, let's look at the complete original title in your file attachment: "Loi portant statut des Juifs", so based on what you've said, that would translate as, "Law on [the] statute of Jews", is that your contention? Law regarding the statute of Jews, or Law regarding the status of Jews—which do you think is meant here? Hint: one of them is redundant and makes no logical sense, and the other is a neat and concise description of the text of the law which follows in the file you added.

If you want to make a case for "Statute on Jews" as a valid translation for "Loi portant statut des juifs" please make it here, although I think it's self-evidently refuted by the file image you added. Mathglot (talk) 00:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

As a separate but related issue, there's currently a section in the article entitled Laws and statutes. This heading seems redundant to me, as (especially in the plural) I see no distinction in a legal context between a law and a statute as the terms are commonly used. I am not a lawyer, and if there is a fine legal distinction I am not aware of, I should like to know it; but in any case, such nice distinctions, even if they exist, don't have a place in improving an encyclopedia article intended for non-specialists. I'd be in favor of simplifying the section name to one word, or the other. Mathglot (talk) 01:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Seriously? A cursory search on Google Books produces some eminent academics who have used the term "Statute on Jews" as a translation - including 1 by Robert Paxton (see his explicit translation on p.3) was one of the most eminent scholars on Vichy history there ever has been (other major works include 2 "Jewish Statute" or 3 "Vichy Statute"). This is pretty convincing on the level of WP:UCRN alone. Since the Loi portant statut des Juifs is almost always known as the Statut des Juifs (1) in French, this translation should not be surprising and has little to do with the full title of the legislation. In fact, I believe that - because it was executed by the executive rather than the parliament - it is in fact, de jure, a statute.

You say you're "really only interested in improving the article", so why not have a go at that before you start fighting this particular (and rather obscure) battle? In the meantime, it would be nice to get others involved in this discussion. —Brigade Piron (talk) 10:15, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

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