Ana Myriam Garro (X) Oct 25, 2012:

@ Yolanda ¿Para qué país es la traducción? ¿Estados Unidos o Gran Bretaña? Por los discussion entries podrás notar que hay diferencias de vocabulario entre un país y otro. Gracias, Myriam

Ana Myriam Garro (X) Oct 25, 2012:

Thank you Charles I feel quite relieved to know that I've not been mistranslating all my life! After your and Allegro's post I felt quite desperate! And by the way, my main market is U.S., I don't remember ever having made a translation for a British customer. Saludos, Myriam

Charles Davis Oct 25, 2012:

American usage Myriam: I was too hasty in dismissing "registry". Allegro and I are both British, and in British English, as I have said, a registry is a place where registers are kept. But I have just looked it up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which is a standard source on American English usage, and one of the definitions of "registry" is "an official record book".
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/registry
So in American English it is correct.

I have given my view on whether a "protocolo" should be called a register (or registry in American English), but as you can see from Allegro's response to me, even professional notaries use the term, so I can hardly claim it is definitely wrong. It is just a matter of opinion.

Ana Myriam Garro (X) Oct 25, 2012:

@ Charles I would never argue about a term with a native speaker of English. Perhaps, like you say, Cabanellas is wrong, but in Argentina is one of the most reliable legal dictionaries. I have just checked other legal dictionaries and they provide the same translation. Perhaps they copied what Cabanellas wrote. I know for certain that Protocolo is almost exclusively translated as “formal registry” in Argentina, because a customary practice in my country is to work with a group of translators when the translation is too long and we have a very short time, so I have seen that translation thousands of times used by a lot of translators. Morover we translate the verb “Protocolizar” as “to formally register”, and that is also a standardized term. But this is not a “defense” of my translation, rather an explanation of why I chose that term without hesitation. And by the way, I do take note of Allegro’s your translation. Saludos, Myriam

Charles Davis Oct 25, 2012:

@ Myriam I'm sorry, but I don't think the Cabanellas translation is appropriate. "Protocolo" means the same in Argentina as in other civil-law countries:

"¿Qué es el Protocolo Notarial?
El protocolo es el libro formado por folios numerados y sellados, en los que el notario asienta y autoriza las escrituras y actas que se otorguen ante él."
http://escribaniarodolfi.com.ar/preguntas.html#4

As I have just said, I don't think "register" is the right word for it in English. But in any case, a registry is a place where registers are kept; the books themselves are registers.

Charles Davis Oct 25, 2012:

@ Allegro Far be it from me to tell your colleague what to call it, but in my opinion (and I think you would agree in principle) it is advisable to distinguish the functions, procedures and indeed terminology of civil-law and common-law notaries. Common-law public notaries keep journals or registers or record books in which they record the salient details of their acts. But a "protocolo" is a volume containing originals of notarial documents, and I think that to distinguish this from a common-law notary's register it is best to call it a protocol. This is the term officially used in Lousiana and Puerto Rico, where civil-law notaries operate, and indeed among civil-law notaries in Florida. It is also the term used by the Society of Public Notaries of London:

"1. Documents in notarial or authentic form:
Normal practice shall be for such documents to be executed in duplicate original and for the original not issued to the client to be kept on a notarial protocol."
http://www.facultyoffice.org.uk/Notaries4.14.html

They're also called protocols in Australia.