Comparative law notes
The translation inspired by : Jan Gościński "The names of English judicial offices, courts and tribunals and their translation into Polish" published in Comparative Legilinguistics, vol. 28/2016, available at : https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/cl/article/viewFile/7432/7465 (accessed May 23, 2018) "The traditional Polish equivalent sędzia pokoju is calqued on the term justice of the peace and is used both for a magistrate and a justice of the peace. In a similar vein, a magistrates' court is traditionally translated as sąd pokoju although a more precise translation should read sąd sędziów pokoju... (...). The problem with these translations is that they do not refer the Polish reader to anything similar in the Polish legal system and do not explain in any way what type of judge and what type of court we mean. Tht is why they must be either accompanied by a definition or the terms must be translated descriptively if it is possible to coin handy descriptive equivalents. The definition or description should give an insight into the nature of the court and the judge. (...)If we know that the term magistrate is currently predominantly used to denote an unpaid person, usually legally unqualified, who acts part-time as a judge in a magistrates' court, then we can translate this term descriptively as sędzia niezawodowy or sędzia społeczny.In the past, today's district judges (magistrates' courts) were called stipendiary magistrates because they were paid a stipend for their work. A stipendiary magistrate might be translated descriptively as sędzia zawodowy w sądzie pokoju. (...)
