of the (than late) economic founder

polyglot45 Feb 14, 2017:

@Tony Indeed if this is projecting into the future. I hadn't read it that way. Before coffee

Tony M Feb 14, 2017:

@ Polyglot No, because in EN, when we say 'late', we mean 'who has just died' — which here would be taken as meaning 'at the moment you are reading this'.
So it is necessary to indicate in some way 'by which future time she will be dead'; as I said in my comment, it is the use of 'then' which is odd and unidiomatic in EN — but the idea does need to be expressed in some way.

polyglot45 Feb 14, 2017:

franchement même s'il s'agit d'une coquille ("then" et non "than"), j'ai du mal à comprendre à quoi sert le mot. "......the (late) founder..." aurait largement suffi. On dit "at the time of her death". On sait donc que la personne est décédée. La partie entre parenthèses n'ajoute rien mais il est vrai que les juristes ont tendance à se répéter pour être certains de se faire comprendre......

Je viens de voir l'autre question - il est donc clair que "dann" (allemand) = "then" (anglais). On comprend tout de suite l'erreur

Tony M Feb 14, 2017:

@ Asker Yes, HAS to be a typo for 'then'!
When this issue arises, the Founder will have died, so at that time, she will have become 'late'.
The EN overall is appalling, and although it is clearly 'then' which was the intended word, even that wouldn't really be terribly correct in 'proper' EN. We'd probably more naturally have written 'by that time late'