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The Cistercian monks of Val-Saint-Lambert Abbey translated or had translated into old French (Picard French) a large number of their charters, drafted in Latin, at the end of the 12thor in the 13th century. Thus, the 96 charters in Latin transcribed into a cartulary compiled at the end of the 13th century are all accompanied by a very good translation, being both very close to the Latin text in terms of content and structure and true to French syntax and set expressions. Other translations of acts, often of the same acts, can be found either in the archives ( chartrier) or in a copy of a 1411 cartulary, where acts and translations from the archives are transcribed. This is not the case for the translations in the 13th century cartulary, which seem to have been made for that very cartulary. Some of the 14th century translations are accompanied by a text explaining that they were necessary for laypeople to understand the acts, particularly in case of a dispute. On the other hand, nothing explains why, several decades earlier, the monks had systematically translated the acts in Latin in their own, monastic cartulary.