People who study languages will be aware of the concept of the ‘false friend’, a word that may mean one thing in your own language but which, when used in another language, means something completely different. Occasionally these can be amusing: for instance, a Frenchman may be slightly bemused when foodstuffs are advertised in the UK as having no preservatives (i.e. no additives whose purpose is to delay the food in turning bad). ‘Why would one even think of adding preservatives?’ our hypothetical French friend may muse. In French, you see, a ‘préservatif’ is a condom.
I suspect that more of a problem, at least in legal drafting in English but relating to a foreign system of laws, is a word that has the same meaning but somehow doesn’t quite fit exactly. One of those words for documents produced in Russia is ‘control’.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines control as: ‘the power to influence or direct people’s behaviour or the course of events’. And it’s that word ‘direct’ which to me is the overriding association. In a legal sense, it suggests the ability to determine policy.
This is seen in the concept of ‘control’ over a company, and is the reasoning behind a change of control clause in contracts. If you’ve signed up with a particular partner on the strength that Part A is running the show and Party A then sells up so that you’re effectively dealing with Party B, you want to protect yourself in case you find that the way Party B does things isn’t to your liking.
A phrase you often see in documents written in English about Russia, however, is ‘state control’ with reference to a particular industry or sector. The following example is a heading taken from the Annual Report of the IP regulator Rospatent for 2012: “The enhancement of state control (supervision) in the area of legal protection and utilization of the results of R&D”.
I know that, with all respect to Mr Putin and the government he runs, it isn’t a regime that I’d regard as especially hands-off. Nonetheless, I’d suggest that ‘control’ in this context has strong Soviet connotations of the centralised economy and state planning. At least if you’re trying to write for foreigners in a way that will make Russia sound attractive, I’d really think twice.
Alternatives include ‘oversee’, which the OED defines as to ‘supervise (a person or their work), especially in an official capacity’ or ‘supervise’, which according to the OED is to ‘observe and direct the execution of (a task or activity)’. However, in my view ‘regulate’ will often be the best option.
This has a sense of overseeing an area of activity, especially business activity, by means of enforcing rules and regulations which provide a framework for that activity to be carried out in the best possible way for the economy as a whole and taking into account the interests of the relevant stakeholders. I think that this is often the best solution when ‘control’ is used in Russian.
