Miguel Emiliano López Castillo

Federal Labor Law & translation

As we know in México there are still many aspects of our social reality that the law
isn’t capable to legislate or control to its totality yet, one of the most controversial
aspects of our law, was the labor law, because it’s a fact that compare to other
countries in north and south America, we have very poor salaries, many workers
don’t even have social security and therefore are vulnerable to any abuse a
company or its contractor intend to do. In an attempt to solve this situation a reform
was made to this law, and now we are going to see it, and will put special attention
on how it was translated it and compare it to what we saw on this unit.

To start, I think it’s appropriate to look on the working conditions, this can be found
on the federal employment law in the article 24, which establishes that “working
conditions must be established in writing, and each party must be provided with
copy of the employment agreement. And, the article 25 states that the individual
employment agreement must contains all the identification of the worker, type of
service or services which the worker will provide, the place of work, salary, work
schedule, days, and place where salary will be paid, how many days of vacations it
will have, if said worker will have training or capacitation, etc.
As we can see, these are all the basic elements that are needed in a work
relationship and in an employment agreement. It’s this last form that I find it very
interesting, because it’s a word that helps substitute the word in Spanish of
“contrato colectivo”, which at the same time helps the translator to avoid the use of
“escrito”, a word which we as Mexicans know that is a form of document of any
kind but with formalities that are stablished in this law, which gives it authenticity,
but there’s seem to be no such word as that in the English vocabulary. We can
clearly see how the translation may need to alter the structure of a document in
order to preserve the meaning of it.

Another interesting aspect is that in the Federal Employment law there is no notice
period, which is a length of time in which the employee gives a notice to the
employer that its leaving, so in that way it may find another employee or at the
least prepare for said departure. The closest there is in Mexican legislation is the
notice that the employer must give to its employee with the cause of the dismiss
and has a period of 5 days. In case the employer doesn’t give it, the said dismiss is
invalided. All of this is found in the article 47, fraction XV. This is one of many
considerations a translator must have, because in this case, the concept of the
notice period doesn’t even exist in our legislation, on the document that I found,
said translator just made a comment about its nonexistence, but compared it to the
obligation of the employer, giving a hint that the focus of the translator are the
English readers, and its main purpose it’s the understanding of the reader.

Another article is the 3, which essentially prohibits any sort of discriminations

against a worker, said articles states that any distinction based on race, religion,
sex, age, nationality, sexual orientation, migratory condition, health, political
affiliation, or social status is prohibited. In this case, these is a great example of a
Miguel Emiliano López Castillo

literal translation, in which nothing needed to be changed, leaving the sentence the
same, at the same time it continues to give the right message.

For last I want to point out that I find very interesting the concept of restricting
covenants which doesn’t exist in our legislation, and there is nothing even close to
it, making it that they don’t have any effect at all, but in the US it does. They’re a
form of obtaining certain rights at the same time you get limitations, in other words
you gain property, but you are limited by how you can use it. In the US they can
even be cohesive, but as I said earlier, in Mexico they aren’t very well developed,
but still, they have been found in use via protecting company secrets and
employers information.

Connell, B. (2019). What Is an Employment Agreement?. Retrieved 2 May 2022, from

https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/what-is-an-employment-agreement-14971099

FEDERAL LABOR LAW in Spanish Translation. Retrieved 2 May 2022, from

https://tr-ex.me/translation/english-spanish/federal+labor+law

Camara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Union. (2015). Ley Federal delTrabajo [Ebook].

Diario Oficial de la Federacion. Retrieved from
https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/156203/1044_Ley_Federal_del_Trabajo.pdf

(2019). Retrieved 2 May 2022, from

https://knowledge.leglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/LEGlobal-Employment-Law-
Overview_Mexico_2019-2020.pdf

Restrictive covenant. (2022). Retrieved 2 May 2022, from

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/restrictive_covenant#:~:text=A%20restrictive%20covenant
%20is%20a,grantee's%20use%20of%20the%20property.