charges du passé

13:44 Nov 4, 2020 

After decades of pendulum-swinging between polluted sites and inherited liabilities, I found that the latter works as a catch-all in most cases. IMO charges du passé is on all 'fours' with the German term, though I must admit that my UK conveyancing vision initially flashed up a printed *local land charges* search form.

13:29 Nov 4, 2020 

Yes, I've heard the discovery of archaeological riches can be a real headache.

My reference to Adrian MM's "madness" was a compliment in reality: his decades of legal experience, and way of expressing his legal knowledge, often leave me struggling to comprehend. In this case his mention of the possible influence of German on Luxembourgish French turns out to be, IMHO, bang on. The reference to vestiges du passé means that "contaminated site" is clearly not right. Indeed the only examples suggested are objects of value from the past.

We need a Luxembourg lawyer... in fact I think I'll have a Google right now to see if I can find a friendly one.

11:07 Nov 4, 2020 

any "madness" in taking into account possible "contamination" (simply "influence"?) from neighbouring languages. Happens all the time, nothing unexpected.

BTW discovering "vestiges du passé" might well be occasionally a great contribution to the history of mankind, but it's the worst nightmare for the owners of the land. Your property gets invaded / taken over by archaeologists, and if the find is significant enough, you can even forget about building anything.

Real life story from an old lady that "owns" some remains from the time when Serbia was part of the Roman Empire: "Look what they've done to my garden! My husband wanted to build a cellar, when we started digging we found these annoying stones and old bricks. As the word spread around the village, 'these people' (a team of archaeologists) invaded our garden for months. All they were doing was boozing and whoring (her words) and when they were finally gone, I wasn't allowed to touch anything - couldn't finish my cellar."

end of digression

"charges du passé" could be a potential risk, but it's not really any kind of "unpaid debts".

20:30 Nov 3, 2020 

Fast kein Deutsch... aber ich kann natürlich in Google Übersetzer suchen. And what I find there is rather fascinating: Altlasten produces "contaminated sites" ... but alt lasten (alte Lasten) gives "old burdens", which to my mind is uncannily similar to charges du passé! So not for the first time there appears to be method in Adrian MM's madness: Luxembourgish French being, it appears, "contaminated" by the "burden" of being so close to les pays germanophones.

16:32 Nov 3, 2020 

...?

15:11 Nov 3, 2020 

Maybe "retrospective liabilities" ?

15:02 Nov 3, 2020 

I went to that page but I'm not a registered member so I can't see everything. Do you mean the 3rd example ("Bien que ces polluants représentent un risque ...")? Yes, it seems to be what we have here... but no translation of the term itself unfortunately.

14:54 Nov 3, 2020 

There's another example here (the last one):
http://context.reverso.net/traduction/francais-anglais/charg...
I think "historical liabilities" is a good approximation - liabilities is what they are.

14:02 Nov 3, 2020 

this fund invests quite a lot in the real estate sector: hence the reference to immobilier (and to give a bit of context which may be useful).
PPS also, "historical liabilities" seems, to me, not quite to convey the "problems" which may come to light when you uncover vestiges du passé, leading potentially to expensive remedial works, etc., but not necessarily being able to be described as "liabilities".