Friday, April 30, 2010

Are You Sure You Want to 'Deponering' Your Case?

There has been plenty of times you hear about 'deponering' in Indonesian media lately. Usually some big shot lawyers use the word to mean 'dropping the case'.


I cringed. And I bet Colson too.

It is no secret that our law is based on Dutch law from the colonial era, so there are plenty of Dutch words in Indonesian Law related language. At Indonesian Law Schools, it is acquired to take (CMIIW) one semester Dutch language. Some says one semester is not enough, but I can a sure you, I only took three months of Dutch course to pass NT2, a Dutch language test. Sure, I still speak with an accent, I still make grammar mistake. However, I do know that I need to consult a dictionary for a correct usage of words. Unlike those big shots.

To the best of my knowledge, and without my Van Dale dictionary near by, in Dutch Law one uses 'deponeren' in conjunction with branding, as in 'merken deponeren', registering brand names. If one wants to stop the law process, one 'seponeren' the case.

You might thought that perhaps like 'beleid' that is in KBBI, Indonesian equivalent of OED or Van Dale, 'deponering' is a word of Indonesian language by now. However, it is not part of KBBI. I heard Indonesia doesnt have the equivalent of Black Law Dictionary, let alone an Indonesian-English Law dictionary. Some Law Firms and Institutions have their own glossaries. In one of such glossaries, I found this translation of 'deponir':
Termination of an investigation because the incident being investigated is considered to to constitute a crime.
That's the closest I got to 'deponering' in Indonesian Law glossaries that I have, with no exact translation to English.

I wonder if the word changes its mean in Indonesian language, or it's a collective misinformation; just like people thought bagpipe was invented in Scotland, even though it was actually invented somewhere in Asia.

Now, who should I contact for some clarification? Hmm...

PS: Come to think of it, perhaps they use 'deponeren' as in 'iets in de prullenbak deponeren', throwing something to trash. Interesting take...

2 comments:

colson said...

You need no one for clarification. Not at all. Not if it comes to Dutch language. You are absolutely right of course about the meaning of 'deponeren' in conjunction to 'merken' and 'prullenbakken'.

[Factually my 'Dikke van Dale'
- a present my wife-to-be bought for me almost 50 years ago- tells me the third (which I didn't know about) of the four official meanings of 'deponeren' is: "een strafzaak deponeren: terzijde leggen, niet vervolgen"]

triesti said...

So on Queen's day we both learned something about Dutch Legalese:)

Thanks for looking up the meaning of it. In Dutch-Indonesia Dictionary, they dont have the 3th official meaning. I wonder if there's Dutch equivalent to Black Law dictionary where one can find legalese in Dutch and anything to do with Law.

Man, I need to find my Dikke van Dale. It used to be on my nightstand, as I was reading some old Dutch books.