LEGAL TRANSLATION – A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ENDEAVOUR

Versions

PDF (Język Polski)

Keywords

legal translation
legal translators’ agency
cognitive processes
tesseract model
outstitutional contexts
legal systems
legal genres
fitness- for-purpose
language and law

How to Cite

SCOTT, J. (2017). LEGAL TRANSLATION – A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ENDEAVOUR. Comparative Legilinguistics, 32, 37–66. https://doi.org/10.14746/cl.2017.32.2

Abstract

Legal translation is a highly skilled task. It has even been described as the “ultimate linguistic challenge” (Harvey 2002: 177). However, law firms or corporations that procure translations from self- employed translation practitioners often find the intricacies of the task difficult to perceive. Following extensive fieldwork examining how legal translation is commissioned and performed in ‘outstitutional’ contexts, I have developed a multidimensional model which illustrates the legal translator’s textual agency, aimed at conveying the complexities of translation performance to clients and other stakeholders. It may also serve to train fledgling legal translators, and to heighten practising translators’ awareness of their overall task. The impetus for the model sprang primarily from findings of serious information asymmetry and goal divergence in the market, and evidence that actors involved do not grasp (a) the need for legal translators to be fully briefed, or (b) the layers of skills involved. 

https://doi.org/10.14746/cl.2017.32.2
PDF (Język Polski)

References

Alcaraz Varó, Enrique, and Hughes, Brian. 2002. Legal translation explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.

Baaij, Cornelius J. W. 2014. Legal Translation and the ‘Contamination’ of Comparative Legal Research. In Comparative Law – Engaging Translation ed. Simone Glanert, 104-122. Abingdon: Routledge.

Baker, Mona. 2001. In other words. London: Routledge. 58

Barnes, Jeffrey. 2016. How well does plain language work? A legislative perspective. Paper presented at IALS/Clarity seminar, 6 October 2016, in London, UK.

Bhatia, Vijay K. 1987. Language of the law. Language Teaching, 20, 227-234.

Bhatia, Vijay K. 2006. Legal genres. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics Volume 7 ed. Kevin Brown, 1-7. Boston: Elsevier.

Bhatia, Vijay K. 2010. Drafting Legislative Provisions: Challenges and Opportunities. The Loophole, 12, 5-15.

Bhatia, Vijay K. 2014. Worlds of written discourse: A genre-based view. London: Bloomsbury.

Biel, Łucja. 2009. Organization of background knowledge structures in legal language and related translation problems. Comparative Legilinguistics 1, 176-189.

Biel, Łucja. 2010a. Corpus-Based Studies of Legal Language for Translation Purposes: Methodological and Practical Potential. In Reconceptualizing LSP. Online proceedings of the XVII European LSP Symposium 2009, ed. Carmen Heine and Jan Engberg. Aarhus: Aarhus.

Biel, Łucja. 2010b. The textual fit of legal translations: focus on collocations in translator training. In Teaching Translation and Interpreting: Challenges and Practices ed. Łukasz Bogucki and Mikołaj Deckert, 23-38. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

Biel, Łucja. 2011. Professional realism in the legal translation classroom: Translation competence and translator competence. Meta, 56(1), 162-178.

Biel, Łucja. 2014. The textual fit of translated EU law: A corpus- based study of deontic modality. The Translator, 20(3), 332- 355.

Biel, Łucja, and Engberg, Jan. 2013. Research models and methods in legal translation. Linguistica Antverpiensia, 12, 1-11.

Bocquet, Claude. 1994. Pour une méthode de traduction juridique. Prilly: CB Service.

Bocquet, Claude. 2008. La traduction juridique : fondement et méthode. Brussels: De Boeck.

Cao, Deborah. 2007. Translating law. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Calderoni, Francesco. 2010. Organized crime legislation in the European Union. London: Springer.

Chesterman, Andrew. 2013. Models of what processes? Translation and Interpreting Studies, 8(2), 155-168.

Chesterman, Andrew and Wagner, Emma. 2002. Can theory help translators?: a dialogue between the ivory tower and the wordface. Manchester: St Jerome.

Cornu, Gérard. 1990. Vocabulaire juridique. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Crump, David. 2002. Against plain English: The case for a functional approach to legal document preparation. Rutgers Law Journal, 33(3), 713-44.

Darling, David. 2004. The universal book of mathematics: from abracadabra to Zeno’s paradoxes. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Déal, Emilie. 2004. Langue du droit et doctrine: la linguistique juridique au service de l’accessibilité internationalisée des contributions doctrinales. Meta, 34(2), 233- 265.

De Groot, Gérard-René. 2006. Legal translation. In Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, ed. Jan M. Smits, 423- 433. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Endicott, Timothy A. O. 2000. Vagueness in law. Oxford: Oxford. Engberg, Jan. 2004. Statutory Texts as Instances of Language(s): Consequences and Limitations on Interpretation. Brooklyn Law Journal, 3, 1135-1166.

Engberg, Jan. 2013. Comparative law for translation: the key to successful mediation between legal systems. In Legal translation in context: Professional issues and prospects, ed. Annabel Borja Albi and Fernando Prieti Ramos, 9-25. Bern: Peter Lang.

Février, Philippe, Linnemer, Laurent and Visser, Michael. 2004. Life and death and real estate in France: testing for asymmetric information in the viager market. Risques, 59, 2.

Flusser, Vilém. 2002. Writings. Ed. Andreas Ströhl, trans. Erik Eisel. Minneapolis: Minnesota.

Folena, Gianfranco. 1991. Volgarizzare e tradurre. Turin: Einaudi. Galdia, Marcus. 2003. Comparative law and legal translation. The European Legal Forum 1, 1-4.

Galdia, Marcus. 2009. Legal linguistics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Gallego Hernandez, Daniel. 2012. Traducción económica y corpus: del concepto a la concordancia. Alicante: Alicante.

Garcìa Izquierdo, Isabel and Borja Albi, Annabel. 2008. A multidisciplinary approach to specialized writing and translation using a genre based multilingual corpus of specialized texts. LSP and professional communication, 8(1), 39-63.

Garrido Rodríguez, Ignacio. 2012. Translation in the Civil Service: the Case of the Spanish National Traffic Authority. Analysis of the Invoice as a Textual Genre. Sendebar, 23, 207-226.

Garrido Rodríguez, Ignacio. 2015. Macroestructura de los estatutos de sociedades alemanas y españolas: influencias legislativas y an lisis contrastivo. In Interacciones. Reflexiones en torno a la traducción e Interpretación del/al alemán, ed. María Ángeles Recio Ariza, et al. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Garzone, Giuliana. 2000. Legal and functionalist approaches: A contradiction in terms? Paper presented at Legal translation, history, theory/ies, and practice, http://www.tradulex.com/Actes2000/Garzone.pdf.

Garzone, Giuliana and Ilie, Cornelia. 2014. Introduction. In Genres and genre theory in transition, ed. Giuliana Garzone and Carmen Ilie, 7-15. Boca Raton: BrownWalker.

Gémar, Jean-Claude. 2002. Le plus et le moins-disant culturel du texte juridique. Langue, culture et equivalence. Meta, 47(2), 163- 176.

Gémar, Jean-Claude. 2012, November. De la traduction juridique à la jurilinguistique: la quête de l’équivalence. Colloque international sur La traduction dans des contextes de plurilinguisme official.

Gentzler, Edwin. 1993. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge.

Glanert, Simone and Legrand, Pierre. 2013. Foreign law in translation: if truth be told.... In Current legal issues: law and language, ed. Michael Freeman and Fiona Smith, 513-532. Oxford: Oxford.

Gotti, Maurizio. 2012. Text and genre. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and the Law, ed. Peter M. Tiersma and Laurence M. Solan, 52-66. Oxford: Oxford.

Gozdz-Roszkowski, Stanislaw. 2006. Recurrent word combinations in judicial argumentation. A corpus-based study. In Langue, Droit, Société, ed. Danuta Bartol, Anna Duszak, Hubert Izdebski and Jean-Marie Pierrel, 139-152. Nancy: Nancy.

Harvey, Malcolm. 2002. What’s so special about legal translation? Meta, 47(2), 177-185.

Hertel, Christian. 2009. An overview of legal systems. Notarius International 1(2), 128-141.

Heylen, Kris, Bond, Stephen, De Hertog, Dirk, Kockaert, Hendrik, Steurs Frieda, Vulić, Ivan. 2014. TermWise: Leveraging Big Data for Terminological Support in Legal Translation. Terminology and Knowledge Engineering, June 20, Berlin, Germany. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01005842/document.

House, Juliane. 1977. A model for assessing translation quality. Meta, 22(2), 103-109.

Jayme, Erik. 1995. La langue: risque linguistique et droit international privé. In Recueil des cours: Collected courses of The Hague Academy of International Law, 189-194. The Hague: Kluwer Law.

Kasirer, Nicolas. 2001. François Gény’s libre recherche scientifique as a Guide for Legal Translation. Louisiana Law Review, 61(2), 331-352.

Kjaer, Anne L. 2007. Phrasemes in legal texts. In Phraseologie/Phraseology: Ein internationales Hand-buch der zeitgen ssischen Forschung/An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. Vol. 1, ed. Harald Burger, Dmitrij Dobrovol’skij, Peter K hn and Neal R. Norrick, 506-516. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Kjaer, Anne L. 2008. The Every-Day Miracle of Legal Translation. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 21, 1, 67-72.

Lamalle, Sandy. 2014. Multilevel Translation Analysis of a key Legal Concept: Persona Juris and Legal Pluralism. In The Ashgate Handbook of Legal Translation, ed. Le Cheng, King Kui Sin and Anne Wagner, 299-312. Farrnham: Ashgate.

Lupoi, Maurizio. 2013. Trusts in Italy as a living comparative law laboratory. Trusts & Trustees 19, 3/4, 302-308.

Mattila, Heikki E. S. 2006. Comparative legal linguistics. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Mauro, Jacques. 1988. Au carrefour des droits et des langues : la langue applicable au contrat, le risque linguistique. Gazette du Palais, 1.214.

Mayoral Asensio, Robert. 2003. Translating official documents. Manchester: St Jerome.

McAuliffe, Karen. 2013. Precedent at the Court of Justice of the European Union: The linguistic aspect. Current Legal Issues, 15, 483-493.

Mellinkoff, David. 1963. Language of the law. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Monjean-Decaudin, Sylvie. 2010a. Approche juridique de la traduction du droit. Working Paper, CEJEC European and comparative law research center, http://cejec.u-paris10.fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/smonjeandecaudin070110.doc, Accessed 25 November 2016.

Monjean-Decaudin, Sylvie. 2010b. Territorialité et extraterritorialité de la traduction du droit. Meta, 55(4), 693-711

Monjean-Decaudin, Sylvie. 2012. La traduction du droit dans la procédure judiciaire. Paris: Dalloz.

Montalt Ressurrecció, Vicent, Epeleta Piorno, Pilar and Izquierdo Garcìa, Isabel. 2008. Developing communicative and textual competence through genres. Translation Journal, 12(4).

Munday, Jeremy. 2008. Introducing translation studies. London: Routledge.

Nida, Eugene A. 1976. A framework for the analysis and evaluation of theories of translation. In Translation: Applications and Research, ed. Richard W. Brislin, 47-91. New York: Gardner Press.

Nielsen, Sandro. 1994. The bilingual LSP Dictionary: principles and Practice for legal language. T bingen: Gunter Narr Verlag T bingen.

Nord, Christiane. 1997. Translating as a purposeful activity. Manchester: St Jerome.

Phillips, Alfred. 2003. Lawyers’ language. London: Routledge. Pigeon, Louis-Philippe. 1982. La traduction juridique: L’équivalence fonctionnelle. In Langage du droit et traduction, ed. Jean- Claude Gémar, 271-281. Québec: Conseil de la langue française.

Pollman, Terrill. 2002. Building a tower of Babel or building a discipline? Talking about legal writing. Marquette Law Review, 85(4), 887-928.

Pommer, Sieglinde. 2008. Translation as Intercultural Transfer: The Case of Law. SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 3(1), 17-21.

Pontrandolfo, Gianluca. 2015. Investigating judicial phraseology with COSPE: A contrastive corpus-based study. In New directions in corpus-based translation studies, ed. Claudio Fantinuoli and Federico Zanettin, 137–160. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Prieto Ramos, Fernando. 2014. Legal translation studies as interdiscipline: Scope and evolution. Meta, 59(2), 260-277.

Pym, Anthony. 2010. Exploring translation theories. London: Routledge.

Ralli, Natascia. 2009. Terminografia e comparazione giuridica: metodo, applicazioni e problematiche chiave. inTRAlinea, Specialised Translation I (Special issue).

Rogers-Glabush, Julie. 2009. IBFD International tax glossary. Amsterdam: IBFD.

Salmi-Tolonen, Tarja. 2006. From Linguistic Knowledge to Contracting Capabilities – and back again. In International Academic Symposium on Commercial Management, ed. David Lowe, 83-92. Manchester: University of Manchester.

Samuel, Geoffrey. 2014. An introduction to comparative law theory and method. Oxford: Hart.

Sandrini, Peter. 1999. Legal terminology. Some aspects for a new methodology. Hermes, 22, 101-112.

Šarčević, Susan. 1997. New approach to legal translation. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.

Šarčević, Susan. 2000. Legal translation and translation theory: a receiver-oriented approach. Paper presented at Legal translation, history, theory/ies, and practice, February 17-19. http://tradulex.org/Actes2000/sarcevic.pdf.

Šarčević, Susan. 2012. Challenges to the legal translator. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, ed. Peter M. Tiersma and Laurence M. Solan, 187-199. Oxford: Oxford.

Schäffner, Christina. 2004. Metaphor and translation. Journal of pragmatics, 36(7), 1253-1269.

Schroth, Peter W. 1986. Legal translation. American Journal of Comparative Law, 34, 47-65.

Scott, Juliette R. (forthcoming). A Covert-Overt Cline for Legal Translation.

Scott, Juliette R. 2016. Optimising the performance of outsourced legal translation. Currently unpublished doctoral thesis.

Smith, Michael R. 2007. Levels of metaphor in persuasive legal writing. Mercer Law Review, 58, 919-947.

Smith, Sylvia A. 1995. Culture clash: Anglo-American case law and German civil law in translation. In Translation and the law, ed. Marshall Morris, 179-200. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1988/1995. Translation studies: An integrated approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Solan, Laurence M. 2011. Linguistic issues in statutory interpretation. Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 254. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1950310.

Strandvik, Ingemar. 2015. On Quality in EU Multilingual Lawmaking. In Language and Culture in EU Law: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Susan Šarčević, 141-165. Farnham: Ashgate.

Sutskever, Ilya, Vinyals, Oriol and Le, Quoc V. 2014. Sequence to sequence learning with neural networks. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 27 (NIPS 2014), ed. Zoubin Ghahramani, Max Welling, Corinna Cortes, Neil D. Lawrence, and Kilian Q. Weinberger. http://papers.nips.cc/book/advances-in-neural-information-processing-systems-27-2014

Swales, John. 1990. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge.

Tiersma, Peter M. 2000. Legal language. London: University of Chicago Press.

Toury, Gideon. 2012. Descriptive translation studies – and beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Trosborg, Anna. 1997. Rhetorical strategies in legal language: discourse analysis of statutes and contracts. T bingen: Gunter Narr Verlag T bingen.

Vespaziani, Alberto. 2009, September. Towards a Hermeneutical Approach to Legal Metaphor. In ISSL Papers Special Issue. Dossier on Law and Literature. A Discussion on Purposes and Method. Proceedings of the Special WS on Law and Literature held at 24th IVR World Conference in Beijing, China, ed. Paola Mittica, 128-136. Bologna: Bologna. http://www.lawandliterature.org/area/documenti/Law%20and%20Literature%20%20IVR%20WS%20Proceedings%202010.pdf.

Yunus, Kamariah B., & Awab, Su’ad. 2011. Collocational competence among Malaysian undergraduate law students. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 7(1), 151-202.