Translating ‘condamner’ in legal English

Many of my students translate the French word condamner as condemn in English.

The ordinary English meaning of ‘condemn’ in the Cambridge Dictionary is: ‘to criticize something or someone strongly, usually for moral reasons’. For example: ‘Joe Biden condemns Georgia voting law’ (The Guardian, 27 March 2021).

My copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Law (8th ed. 2015) does not include the word ‘condemn’. So how do we translate condamner in legal English?

In criminal proceedings, condemn can refer to the act of punishing someone (for example, you can be condemned to death) but we usually use the word sentence. Compare these French and English recent headlines:

• Nicolas Sarkozy condamné à trois ans de prison  (Le Monde, 1 mars 2021)

• Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to jail for corruption (The Guardian, 1 March 2021). 

And if the punishment is a fine, we can use the verb fine:

• Carrefour condamné à 1,75 million d'euros d'amende (La Tribune, 12 mars 2021)

• Carrefour fined 1.75 million euros (whbl.com, 12 March 2021)

In civil proceedings, we do not say ‘sentenced’ or ‘fined’:

• Party A was ordered to pay damages to Party B

For more about English litigation vocabulary, see here for details of the course I am running in June.