In 1985, Swiss legal philosopher Walter Ott visited Herbert Hart in Oxford and made this record of their meeting, which casts novel light on some of Hart’s ideas. Ott engaged Hart in a fresh encounter with the legal philosophy of Gustav Radbruch, particularly Hart’s and Radbruch’s reasons for a minimum content of justice in law. They also discussed the grudge informer, state responsibility under laws of an earlier régime, and questions of the definition and falsifiability of legal (...) theories. Hart surprisingly reported Hans Kelsen as stating, when they had met at Berkeley in 1961, that Hume (and not Kant, and certainly not Wittgenstein) was the greatest philosopher who had ever lived. The translation is accompanied with annotations explaining references, assumptions and contexts. (shrink)

In this interview Vattimo discusses with Zabala the possibility of a nihilist philosophy of law as an alternative to the idea of justice and the violence that predictably results from it. To make this substitution would involve the redirection of humanity away from its self-understanding as progressively approaching a metaphysical truth that is eternal and toward the acceptance of an already existing “polytheism of values,” where truth is a contingent and changing product of discursiveness. A society that structures its (...) class='Hi'>legal system on what Vattimo terms “optimistic nihilism” would dismiss any urge for the unity and strength supposedly characteristic of monoculturalism and univocal values. Such cohesion as is possible must come from flexibility, responsiveness to contingency, and an openness to multivocal values. “To apply justice to human affairs,” Vattimo argues, is no more than “to adjust things” as conditions change. (shrink)

By exploring the cultural discrepancies in Chinese legal texts and their English versions and to what extent legal and cultural discrepancies influence and constrain legal translation, the study argues that it is useful to consider cultural discrepancies within a semiotic framework. Language is a phenomenon and factor that links different cultures; the use of language is crucial to any legal system. Law, as a cultural product, is attended by cultural discrepancies when switched into other languages (...) for the purpose of achieving equivalence. After a brief overview of cultural differences in translation, legal translation in particular, the study is set to examine the role of translation in crossing through different legal cultures and backgrounds and investigate barriers in the process of translation. Investigating cultural discrepancies in legal translation within a semiotic framework allows us to focus on certain interpretations by acknowledging that legal texts are composed with systems of systems and interacting with other cultural aspects in a wider context. (shrink)

Recent trends in academic and professional legal communication worldwide have promoted significant changes to aim at operating successfully under current multilingual and multilegal contexts. The aim is to consider a kind of supranational legal discourse so as to minimize socio-cultural variants and to promote the pragmatic conditions for harmonized and ‘common sense’ legal practices without excluding potential reciprocal influences of or resistance to one hegemonic legal system upon others. In Brazil, the traditional ‘thinking like a civil (...) lawyer’ culture still prevails against a more global approach constraining the consolidation of the country’s role of major player in most global legal areas. In addition, the key tool required for achieving some sort of global legal status—Brazilian legal operators’ proficiency in legal English—has been barely considered in both academic and professional settings, particularly in legal translation. This study resorts to the linguistic anthropology concept of ‘entextualization’ to discuss the process of official translation in Brazil to render global legal genres. The comparative analysis between the original text in English and its official version in English focus on drafting consistency, the translator’s choice of some formal entextualization elements used in the process of translation and his/her authority as the entextualizing agent to legitimate text. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the concept of translation competence as seen from the perspective of translational hermeneutics. The first part of the article provides a short survey of how translation competence and its develop- ment has been described so far, with a particular focus on the legal translator’s skills and abilities. The second part of the paper briefly presents the notion of translational hermeneutics together with its main concepts. The aim of this part of the article (...) is also to show similarities between the translation phenomenon and hermeneutical studies. Finally, building on Stolze’s hermeneutical model of translation, the last part of the paper presents the main features of a hermeneutical model of legal translation competence. (shrink)

In this article we investigate the relationship between legal translation and legal interpretation. The common wisdom is that these activities are closely related, but the nature of that relationship remains disputable. We adopt the perspective of legal theory—as opposed to the perspective of translation studies—which seems to be underrepresented in the literature of the subject. We start with distinguishing between the two notions of legal interpretation: the wide sense and the narrow sense. We argue (...) that the relationship between legal translation and legal interpretation changes significantly depending on the notion of legal interpretation that is assumed. The wide sense is often assumed by translation scholars and it renders legal interpretation as a necessary prerequisite for legal translation. Jurists, on the other hand, usually assume the narrow sense which renders legal interpretation and legal translation as two distinct activities with some shared features. We then focus on four issues of legal interpretation in the narrow sense: the types of legal interpretive problems, the creation of legal interpretive problems, the methods of legal interpretation, the resolution of legal interpretive problems. We conclude with a detailed comparison of legal translation and legal interpretation in the context of those four issues. (shrink)

Legal Translation in Context. Professional Issues and Prospects, edited by Anabel Borja Albi from Jaume I University and Fernando Prieto Ramos from the University of Geneva, both practising sworn translators, offers an insightful overview of professional practices in the public and private sectors. As such, the book falls within the emerging track of research in Translation Studies, namely—workplace studies, and is a valuable contribution to the field. The book is a fruit of a two-year international project run (...) at the University of Geneva’s Faculty of Translation and Interpreting. Although, due to the growing autonomy of the field of Legal Translation Studies and intense research activity, there are increasingly more publications on legal translation, this book stands out because it approaches legal translation from the perspective of translators and their employers rather than from the usual perspective of the product of their .. (shrink)

Building on a functionalist framework for decision-making in legal translation, a holistic approach to quality is presented in order to respond to the specificities of this field and overcome the shortcomings of general models of translation quality evaluation. The proposed approach connects legal, contextual, macrotextual and microtextual variables for the definition of the translation adequacy strategy, which guides problem-solving and the rest of the translation process. The same parameters remain traceable between the translation (...) brief and the translation product both in pre-delivery revision and in post-delivery assessment. They are the yardstick for identifying predictable evaluative criteria and competence requirements for translators and quality controllers. The implications of the approach on quality assessment and quality management practices are also discussed. Overall, the model illustrates the potential benefits of enhancing predictability and reducing subjectivity on the basis of specific legal translation methodologies. It supports the need for legal translation expertise in quality evaluation and the relevance of Legal Translation Studies to raising standards in professional practice. (shrink)

It is widely held in translation studies that translation proper is not merely a process of linguistic transfer but also of cultural transfer. But how cultural transfer is effected or whether it can be effected is not at all clear. The study begins with a critical analysis of the problems relating to law translation in general and translating the common law into Chinese in particular. It then examines the nature of cultural transfer in law translation with (...) special reference to the translation of common law terminology. The study purports to set out the framework for legal translation as cultural transfer, in particular, for translating the common law into Chinese in Hong Kong. It argues that successful transfer of the legal culture of foreign laws always requires the adjustment of translating language and the employment of metalanguage. (shrink)

The standards for translating texts in specialized fields have become particularly rigorous with the increasing complexity of material and growing demand for its translation. While translations simply aimed at communication and produced by machine translation are proliferating, the need for reliable and high-quality translations is also increasing. The demand for expert-dependable legal translation is higher than ever, requiring competence-based training in the field of legal translation. This paper describes a guided-task framework for developing subject (...) area competence at the earliest stage of an English–Arabic legal translation course. It presents the three most problematic phases of concept processing in legal translation in terms of: legal systems; branches of law; and genre-based phraseology. The approach presented below is part of a more general study that aims to describe the first course in a series of three graduate courses on legal translation, each of them motivated by a guided-task framework that has the aim of developing three specific competences in legal translation: legal concept processing => subject area competence; documentary research => instrumental competence; and legal rhetorics => communicative and textual competence. In this paper we intend to focus on the first course of legal concept processing as a key prerequisite for legal knowledge development. We illustrate the relevance of addressing specific variables when analysing legal concepts in the text that is to be translated, before proceeding to the information search and communication, according to established formulae and conventions. (shrink)

Legal translation is viewed as “a category in its own right” (Weston in An English reader’s guide to the French legal system. Berg, Oxford, (1991, p. 2). It is a kind of translation of the language used for specific purposes (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:28, 2000). Legal translation requires accuracy in relaying the substance of the message, while respecting the form thereof as well as the genius of the target language (Zhao in J (...) Transl Stud 4:19, 2000; Sarcevic in New approach to legal translation. Kluwer Law International, Hague, 1997, p. 52). As generally accepted worldwide, precision is deemed of paramount importance in legal translation. With this in mind, the present paper deals chiefly with the concept of how legal translation can correctly be tested in order to ensure precision and validity for application and implementation. The paper will argue that the main goal of legal translation and the major criterion against which the precision of legal translation should be tested is to reproduce the same legal effect in the target text as that conveyed in the source text regardless of the method(s) used in the translation process. (shrink)

The paper deals with some problems of legal translation with a particular regard to the skopos theory approach, with a special emphasis on the practical implications of these problems to legal translation instruction. The author presents the circumstances in the Republic of Croatia over the preceding several years pertaining to the activities of legal translation for the purpose of accession to the European Union. This particularly refers to the translating of the acquis communautaire into (...) the Croatian language. Possible functions of translated legal and legislative texts are analysed from this viewpoint, as well as various possible related approaches to solving translation problems. The author pays special attention to issues in translating cultural elements, considering that they tend to show special sensitivity to the function of a translated text. Finally, practical application of the above considerations regarding legal translation is presented in the last part of the paper. Having taught courses in legal translation to lawyers aspiring to work as legal translators within EU bodies, the author presents the contents of the courses and some methods of teaching which take account of the skopos theory, as well as the reception of such teaching methods and their outcomes. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to propose an approach to legal translation quality so as to address the idiosyncrasies in legal studies and to confront the challenges and flaws of previous paradigms and models of translation quality assessment. The present approach is associated with the micro-macro textual, contextual, and legal components/variables in the pursuit of an adequate strategy through elaborating the decision making process for translation. The elements of the decision making process (...) remain constant between translation relevancy/brief, and the translation product in the source text analysis, reformulation and revision stages. Translation competence, translation product, and the translation decision making process are all the evaluative standards for both quality controllers and translators. Also, this study scrutinizes the impact of translation quality assessment involving professional and training contexts besides managerial quality. In the upshot, this approach has the potential to reduce subjectivity in the quality of legal translation based on particular methodologies. The proposed framework assists the need for the evaluation of the quality of legal translation to boost the quality benchmarks in the professional environment. (shrink)

The development of genre-awareness is a key issue in legal translator training, as, according to research, semantic text comprehension depends largely on the recognition of genres/text types. Legal translators must be familiar with the rhetorical and textual conventions of legal genres both in the source- and the target language – the two code systems – to realise the communicative aim of the translation, and to be able to produce texts that are acceptable by the professional community. (...) Consequently, in legal translator training the development of intercultural competence has double implications: it refers not only to the ability to transfer between legal systems, but also between legal genres. The biggest challenge of translator training is to improve skills and competences effectively through a selection of texts that realistically meet the changing needs of the translation market, but, at the same time, can be successfully adjusted to the level of proficiency attained by students at different levels of the training. Drawing on both practical experience and empirical research, the paper attempts to present a methodological scheme for the selection and grading of legal genres and text types in legal translator training, taking into account some of the functional typologies, and several other relevant aspects. With a practical approach, the selected genres are introduced in the context of exercises aimed at improving genre-transfer competence and some other skills vital for legal translators. Although the presented scheme/case study has been designed for an actual 3-semester legal translator training where students have legal degrees, it is supplemented with further methodological guidelines so that it can be adapted to other legal translator trainings of any level. (shrink)

While in the majority of English-speaking territories the dominant legal tradition iscommon law, in Louisiana and Quebec the native language is English and the legal system stems from continentalcivil law. Both the Louisiana Civil Code and the Civil Code of Quebec take root in the European codification movement, following Code Napoleon. Bearing in mind the link between law and language, these jurisdictions provide a unique source of Englishcivil lawterminology with well-founded conceptual background.The civil codes of Louisiana and Quebec (...) seem to be potentially useful for the translation of Polish private law into English. Yet there are some reservations which should be considered. By comparing two different translations of Article 292 of the Polish Civil Code, this paper is intended to contribute to the debate on the use of Quebec and Louisiana terminology in Polish-English legal translation. (shrink)

The study is aimed to test the governing-law anchor in the comparative analysis of legal terminology to harmonize the clash of legal cultures in legal translation. It is considered as an adjustment to a juritraductological approach to legal translation which invites legal translators to merge the tools of jurilinguistics, comparative law and traductology in the comparative analysis of legal concepts before selecting a suitable translation solution (Monjean-Decaudin, in: Research methods in (...) class='Hi'>legal translation and interpreting, Routledge, 2019). Rather than transposing a text from a source law system to a target law system, legal translators are believed to operate in the bi-semiotic environment of two legal cultures as navigators of their recipients toward understanding the legal concepts under the governing law of the document. To this end a comparative conceptual analysis, that correlates with the parametrization method (Matulewska in Stud Logic Gramm Rhetor 45:161–174, 2016), should be anchored in the analysis of the source law concepts (Šarčević in New Approach to Legal Translation, Kluwer Law International, The Hague, 2000). First, the componential and taxonomic analyses were used to identify conceptual markers/parameters of source concepts to serve as tertia comparationis for the subsequent search of their functional equivalents in the target legal culture. Source concepts and their functional equivalents were subsequently subject to a comparative componential analysis aimed to reveal a degree of their match based on which coinage operations were activated in selecting suitable translation strategies. We hypothesized that the change in the governing-law perspective would trigger changes in translation solutions. The governing-law-anchored process of comparative analysis was detailed and exemplified by the analysis of the conceptual field of Homicide in the Slovak law, English law, and the US Model Penal Code. (shrink)

Legal terminology is deemed a key feature of legal discourse and a pivotal constituent of competence evaluation and quality control in the translation of legal texts. Problems of terminology unequivocally prove the need for analysing factors governing changing situations as well as macro-textual parameters and measures for the sake of making strategic decisions at a micro-level. There have been a lack of translation methodology among practitioners and trainees and a lack of a practical operational model (...) that comprises all the primary measures and criteria for analysing translation. The present paper seeks to test the efficacy of the integrative model proposed by Prieto Ramos The Ashgate Handbook of Legal Translation, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, 2014) in surmounting terminological problems of Arabic-English legal translation through applying the said model to the translation of the three Arabic Islamic legal terms: ‘bayʿu al-tawliya’, ‘bayʿu al-wafāʾi wal-amāna’ and ‘takhliya’ into legal English. The present paper claims that the integrative model proposed by Prieto Ramos The Ashgate Handbook of Legal Translation, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, 2014) proves useful and fruitful in coping with terminological incongruencies and particularly successful in surmounting problems of rendering legal terms from legal Arabic into legal English. This may be owing to the fact that the said integrative model encompasses all the steps and criteria required for adopting plausible strategic translation decisions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 151-168.

It is a well-acknowledged fact in legal translation studies that when searching for terminological equivalents, translators should make use of comparative conceptual analysis. Thus, legal translation trainees should be equipped with the necessary tools to carry out such analysis, but the question remains: are they? This paper is a follow-up to a study published in 2017, where modified think aloud protocols were used to explore the following research question: to what degree are university students doing a (...) course in legal and economic translation able to apply the methods of comparative conceptual analysis to translation of terms not accounted for sufficiently in legal dictionaries or terms with no straightforward equivalents. The results showed that major issues involve non-linearity of the analysis carried out and insufficient use of the resources available. The present study involves a different group of 29 BA students of the same course two years later, who were assigned the same task. As the retrospective protocols fail to simulate real-life conditions, this study uses screen recording and keystroke logging to track the processes leading to the identification of the conceptual equivalent in a more detailed and less subject-dependent manner. The results suggest that the steps most challenging for students include identification of relevant features defining the source and target language concepts, comparison of these features and selection, or creation, of an equivalent term reflecting the results of the analysis. Students also frequently show Google-driven searching, which influences the order of the steps performed in their analyses and the sources used. To address these challenges, translation training should include a range of tailor-made exercises focusing on the critical steps of the analysis as well as on improving web searching skills. (shrink)

Legal translation between English and Arabic is under researched. However, the growing need for it, due to immigration and asylum seeking, among other reasons, necessitates the importance of more research. The asymmetry between English and Arabic poses many difficulties for legal translators, be they linguistic-based, culture-specific or system-based. The aim of this research is to discuss ways of translating lexical items between English and Arabic. In this current discussion I will present, exemplify and analyse the common difficult (...) areas of translating English/Arabic legal texts and suggest ways of dealing with them. These areas involve culture-specific and system-based terms, archaic terms, specialised terms and doublets and triplets. With this aim in mind, the paper answers the following research questions: 1.What are the common difficulties of translating legal texts between English and Arabic? 2.What are the common lexical difficulties between English and Arabic legal texts? 3.What are the procedures of translating lexical legal terms between English and Arabic? The paper concludes that translating the above-mentioned lexical terms requires expertise, professional training, robust knowledge of the linguistic and legal systems of languages, as well as up-to-date electronic dictionaries and well-defined parallel corpora. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 51-67.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Considering the overwhelming amount of media products that we are subjected to in the 21stcentury and the way in which those inevitably influence our perception of reality, this research pays specific attention to the role of the media in the construction and enhancement of stereotypes in everyday life, via the language or, more specifically, specialized languages. In particular, this paper aims to investigate an American legal TV series in order to analyze the way in which legal English is (...) used in dialogues. The major research questions are: to what extent such a kind of specialized discourse may be really understood by the greater audience? How does legal drama participate in the shaping of stereotypes relating to the legal environment in the country where it is produced, and cross-culturally, bearing in mind the prominence of “made in the USA” products in the television programming across the world? Ultimately, in the light of the previous questions, should the growing field of research in audiovisual translation extend its investigation into the area of legal English? Taking into consideration the seminal work of Pedersen and Diaz Cintas in the field of Audiovisual Translation, the study will examine the subtitling techniques employed for this atypical genre. Through the analysis of a corpus comprising several dialogues from a collection of episodes of the legal show Reckless, the paper will mostly focus on gender representations and their most common linguistically enhanced stereotypes. (shrink)

Legal texts are in the focus of both lawyers and translators. This paper discusses the binary opposition of these two views especially in the light of contract law. There is one crucial epistemic difference between the point of view of the translator and the lawyer when it comes to the interpretation of legal texts. In the translator’s view legal text is traditionally conceived as static as to its nature; something that already exists in the form of text. (...) Traditionally, the translator is interested in the text itself as it was written down in a document, i.e. the translator needs to go back to the frozen moment when a legal document was constructed and finalised. The lawyer, in contrast, is very much interested not only in the text of the legal document but also in the contextual surroundings of the text. In fact, for legal interpretation, sometimes the key-elements for the interpretation come from outside of the text itself. This paper concludes that legal translation is in many cases closer to transcreation than it is to traditionally understood translation. (shrink)

In comparison with the creation of language, translation from one language to another offers greater challenges for those working with languages, be the text for translation concerned with philosophy, literature or law, all of which are arguably highly professional domains. When it comes to the translation of legal fiction, a highly interdisciplinary genre, even experienced practicing translators tend to fall short of being well equipped with sufficient legal knowledge and terminologies, not to mention the capacity (...) to detect the subtleties that are inherent in a legal term. All of the problems above account for the often less-than-satisfactory quality of legal fiction in translation, misleading or confusing the potential target audience. After making the prior theoretical investigations, this paper attempts to analyze some problems in the current Chinese translation of such legal novels as Franz Kafka’s Der Prozess and Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, and then take a corrective stance, hoping to arouse the translators’ awareness of the importance of this genre, as well as their awareness of the essential professional skills they still need to acquire, so that they can reach equivalent accuracy in legal technicalities, as well as subtlety and nuance that reflect the legal spirit. (shrink)

The globalisation of recent decades has led to a soaring demand for the translation of legal or quasi-legal instruments for national judiciaries and for the corporate sector, performed outside institutions. However, there has been little, if any, downstream impact or risk assessment in this field. The international and interdisciplinary project described in this paper, drawing data, inter alia, from case law and stakeholder reporting, seeks to bring to light the ways in which translated legal documents may (...) be challenged, contested or discredited at the various stages of their ‘lives’, and the repercussions of such challenges on trade and the economy, law enforcement, rights, and legal security. A focus is placed on written legal translation performed outside institutions, given that this is an extremely under-researched area, indeed hardly researched at all. Until now, legal translation studies as an discipline has concentrated on process, context, participants and product, but has not investigated the impact of translated documents as binding or non-binding artefacts on the wider world, or their appearance in litigation. The project described in this paper seeks to fill that gap. (shrink)

Various aspects of prepositions translation have been primarily investigated in the framework of translation theory. Applied research is mostly focused on translating particular groups of prepositions against the background of plain language. Legal translation researchers have not yet comprehensively analysed peculiarities of translating Russian prepositions used in legal texts into English. The paper is an attempt to investigate the difficulties which Russian learners can encounter when translating prepositions from Russian commercial contracts into English. Methods employed (...) include language typology comparison, continuous sampling technique, language corpus data analysis as applied to language error forecast and prevention. The material selected for analysis – Russian commercial contracts – is chosen in accordance with the principles of professionalism, globalization, specialisation as well as graduates’ employment opportunities. The author develops a classification of prepositions drawing upon their structural, grammar and semantic functions in the texts of Russian commercial contracts. The findings reveal negative interference zones that can potentially cause preposition errors. Feasibility of the forecast is confirmed by the analysis of real learners’ errors. The research concludes that modelling legal translation teaching which takes into account potential interference zones for students can contribute to shifting focus to problem zones while teaching, raising students’ awareness, and therefore acting as propedeutics of the corresponding errors. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 169-200.

Now available Open Access! See the Bloomsburycollections URL below. -/- Correct bibliographical information is as follows: Gottfried Achenwall, _Natural Law: A Translation of the Textbook for Kant's Lectures on Legal and Political Philosophy_, edited by Pauline Kleingeld, translated by Corinna Vermeulen, with an Introduction by Paul Guyer. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. -/- As the first translation into any modern language of Achenwall’s Ius naturae, from the 1763 edition used by Immanuel Kant, this is an essential work for anyone (...) interested in Kant, the natural law tradition or the history of legal and political theory. For over twenty years, Kant used this book as the basis for his lectures on natural law. It influenced his legal and political philosophy as well as his ethics, and it is indispensable for understanding Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law and his Metaphysics of Morals. -/- Articulating his theory of natural law with clear definitions and precise distinctions, Achenwall offers a lucid account that includes instructive comparisons with the work of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff and others. The volume also contains an Introduction by the eminent Kant scholar Paul Guyer, comparing Achenwall’s theory to the legal and political philosophy of Kant’s Doctrine of Right, and a concordance correlating Achenwall’s Natural Law to Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law. (shrink)

The study focuses on the translatability of EU terminology into Ukrainian, with a specific emphasis on the term ‘regulation’. It explores the challenges and considerations involved in translating legal terms, particularly within the context of EU legislative acts. The concept of translatability potential is substantiated in the article. It is seen as language pair-dependent, influenced by the availability of similar legal concepts in the target law system, equivalent terms in the target language, and other factors. The research delves (...) into the levels of translatability potential of legal terms, taking into consideration the existence of identical concepts in the target legal system, the mono- or polysemic semantic structure of the source term, and the established translation practices accepted by legal professionals. Based on these criteria, legal terms are classified into categories of high, upper-medium, lower-medium, and low translatability potentials. The article applies these criteria to analyse the translatability potential of the term ‘EU regulation’ in Ukrainian legal discourse. The distinction between legal terms and legal concepts are highlighted, and the concepts are considered to be mental representations associated with linguistic units. The corpus method and concept analysis are employed to analyse the impact of the context on the actualisation of specific components of semantic structure and, correspondingly, specific concepts. The use of the terms in ordinary and legal discourse is under analysis, as well as different Ukrainian translations of ‘regulation’ for each concept it manifests. Finally, the semantic structures of the term ‘EU regulation’ and its Ukrainian translation ‘peглaмeнт (rehlament)’ are compared to reveal the semantic shifts caused by translation. The concept and semantic analyses are conducted to explore the realisation of the translatability potential and see if the best option provided by the potential of the term was selected to meet the high requirements of legal translation. (shrink)

Translators and those who commission and/or use translations are often unaware of the myriad of legal rules relating to the translated text. From issues of copyright, confidentiality and contract law, the act of translation as an economic endeavour is subject to many legal rules across multiple jurisdictions. The goal of The Legal Environment of Translation is to offer an overview of how legal rules apply to different aspects of translation. The author does not (...) focus on a particular jurisdiction, but rather presents what he terms ‘a comparative law perspective’. That perspective focuses mainly on describing the rules set out in international law with commentary on general practices common to certain states.The book comprises of six chapters, each including ‘case studies’: brief hypothetical scenarios with comments, which highlight some of the issues covered in the relevant chapter. While a preface to the book puts it in context and sets out its aims and objectives, there is no correspo .. (shrink)

This essay opens the Special Issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law entitled “Legal Languages and Legal Communication” devoted to issues in translating, interpreting and teaching legal languages and legal communication. This volume of the International Journal of the Semiotics of Law comprises twelve articles which might be grouped into three categories of problems i.e. culture in legal translation and interpretation, legal discourse and/in legal communication and teaching legal (...) languages and legal communication. The first section refers to issues connected with legal terminology and the impact legal culture has on the quality of translation and interpretation (Kordić in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Janigova in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Matulewska and Oh in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4)). The second part focuses on the question of legal discourse with a special emphasis on its role in legal communication (Więcławska in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Alwazna in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Hadryan and Rutecka-Góra in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Orts in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Cudowska in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Górska and Juzaszek in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4) and Grieshofer in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4)). The third and last section of the special issue is dedicated to question of instructing legal languages and legal communication and, mainly tackles the problem of designing curricula of English for Legal Purposes in such a way so as to equip legal professionals with such linguistic competences, knowledge and skills that are most valuable for their work (Bhatia in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4); Chiknaverova in Int J Semiot of Law 36 (4)). (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper aims at clarifying some of the most common issues that legal translators have to face when dealing with the translation of private normative texts, such as contracts or wills, which naturally emerge as the consequence and expression of legal or juristic acts in the scope of private law, in Spanish and English. To comprehend the differences and subtleties regarding legal communication between the common law and the continental law countries (specifically the United States and (...) Spain, respectively), we must unveil some essential clues for their translation and application in the global scope of professional interactions, thus creating a process of inter-legal communication, which takes place through the mutual interpretation and application of two, or more, legal traditions. Through the deployment of a generic or pragmatic analysis at textual or discursive and formal or superficial, strata, of two types of genre within the domain of private law (namely wills and tenancy agreements, or leases) this work aims to prove that both the civil law and the common law private instruments are translatable with respect to each other. An important proviso, however, is that their legal traditions and the genres that constitute the communicative tools of their specialised communities must be duly respected and kept in equilibrium, so that one does not overshadow and obliterate the other. Only in that way can the “convergence” of the two traditions truly enrich and strengthen national and international legal culture. (shrink)