Where's the ambiguity in this sentence?
by Samuel Jones
Well, it's the second comma. Can the agreement be terminated - with one year's notice - at any point, or just after five years?
It's a question that is exercising the finest legal and grammarian minds across the Pond. The story comes from Canada's Globe and Mail and it relates a legal disagreement between two companies. However, I would argue that the interesting point is not in the comma. More than anything else, that seems a case of grammatical clumsiness. I'm no lawyer, but the case seems to rest on a comparison that is being made between a French and an English version of the contract. You see, there's an ambiguity between two different renditions of the document. The question of linguistic accuracy and is ultimately down to intent. What will be interesting is which one, in the final verdict, will be given precedence.
Sam Jones
Thanks Yannick. There's a similar, if not so grave, incident here.
Yannick Hartstein
To bring your point home even more tragically, we could mention that translation issues are one of the main excuses - I'm sorry, "points of contention" - in the conflict in Palestine/Israel. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (the page leads to a pdf with french and english versions), voted at the end of the 1967 Six Day War, doesn't clearly state the wishes of the international community. While the French version clearly says that Israel must pull back from the territories ("des territoires"), the English version only mentions that the pull-back will be done "from territories occupied". Depending on which version you rely on, either Israel pulls back from some (that it might define itself) - English, or Israel must retreat to its pre-1967 borders - French. According to this, "French uses its definite article in cases where English uses no article, such as in general statements about a mass noun: Le maïs est un grain ('Maize is a grain')." Still, the negotiators here did a poor job, costing years of mayhem, hundreds of deaths, etc, since the Palestinians rely on the French text, while the Israelis claim the English is the only reliable source of conduct.This sort of linguistic fudging - called "constructive ambiguity" in diplomatic circles - has been raised to an art form by EU negotiators, making sure that each version of a text corresponds to each Member State's needs and whims ...