I too am not a lawyer, however, having been involved with a lot of nonprofit governance, I think that for these purposes, in other languages, yes - "Board of Trustees” and “Board of Directors” are basically interchangeable. The selection of words is usually a stylistic or homage based reason more than a legal distinction. That is not always the case, and when available, I recommend using “Board of Trustees” - but if there’s a language issue presented by this, I think "Board of Directors" is a reasonable substitute to base a translation on. Again, I say that not being with Legal and not as an official WMF recommendation, just my own personal two cents. :)
-greg
On Jan 26, 2017, at 3:07 PM, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello,
2017-01-26 9:38 GMT-08:00 Lena Traer ltraer@wikimedia.org:
Would you say that the Board of Trustees at WMF has the same role as the traditional Board of Directors? If that is the case, "Conseil d'administration" likely is most appropriate translation.
In Russian, the "board" is also translated as "council". However, "Board of Directors" and "Board of Trustees" translate slightly differently. I think non-profit organizations are likely to use "Board of Trustees" whereas for-profit corporations use "Board of Directors".
I'm not very familiar with the legal intricacies of the different kinds of Boards. To be completely accurate, the best term would probably be the English one ("Board of Trustees"), simply because it has an official definition in a specific geography and doesn't have an exact equivalent in other locales. But for the reasons given by Matthieu, it's generally better to try and find the closest approximation.
In France, both non-profit organizations and for-profit organizations can have a "Conseil d'administration". It's also the French phrase we've been using on the Foundation's website since 2004 (although the page hasn't been kept up-to-date with changes in Board members recently): https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Conseil_d%27administration
Hope this helps :)
-- Guillaume Paumier
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