writeaway Jan 13, 2013:

Keep the French whatever happens and use what you find to be the most suitable English translation in ( ). That's my take in any case

cc in nyc Jan 13, 2013:

@ Daryo First, and again, my discussion entry re: ghits was merely in response to their mention in a peer comment. To wit, very few ghits in English does not disqualify a proposed answer (or, in this case, a proposed reference) for a term that also has very few ghits in French.

As far as the actual references go, "Directorate" is used in the translation in Bevins' 1971 compilation, "Department" is used in the UN agreement as published in 1950. Both may be considered "relevant." It's for Jeanne to determine which way to go, and I tend to doubt that her decision will be based on the number of ghits. ;-)

Daryo Jan 13, 2013:

one ghit is here more than enough as long it's a relevant one.
A collection of all the "Treaties and other international agreements of the United States..." is "the" relevant source, whatever is the number or even total absence of ghits. A translation of an international treaty is an official translation - triple checked before publishing - and outranks any numbers of ghits in any on-line dictionary/glossary, online forums etc. especially in a very frequent language pair as is FR-EN/EN-FR and when used in a treaty between USA and France.
The point I was trying to make is that ghits are numbers with no inherent meaning/value.

cc in nyc Jan 13, 2013:

@ Daryo My comment was in response to writeaway's peer comment "total of 3 ghits, which makes it doubtful" regarding "Department of Administrative and Social Conventions." Six ghits for the French, so three ghits in English could be reasonable. That's all.

Daryo Jan 13, 2013:

"There are only 6 ghits"; yes, but what is that supposed to mean or to prove?
There could one and only one ghit when a very specialised term is used in exactly the right way, there could be zillions of ghits for some fanciful conspiracy theory nonsense.
Internet searches are just ONE of many available tools, far from being a perfect one, and to be taken with a pinch of salt (at times with a shovelful of salt!)
There are also cases where there's not a single ghit for terms used in a very specific context giving them a totally different meaning - all you'll find on the Web is the usual meaning. So that meaning doesn't exist just because no one has yet made searchable of the Web a document showing that particular meaning of the term?

cc in nyc Jan 13, 2013:

@ writeaway There are only 6 ghits when googling:
"Direction des conventions administratives et sociales" -proz