scholarly journals The Dubious Quality of Legal Dictionaries

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard-René de Groot ◽  
Conrad J.P. van Laer
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Legal Translation

As a consequence of the still increasing transnational commercial and scholarly cooperation and exchange, more and more often legal information has to be translated. Sometimes the content of legal documents (contracts, statutory provisions, books and articles on legal topics and so on) has to be translated into another language. But even more frequently, information on rules from one legal system has to be provided in the legal language of another legal system. In both cases the translator or the lawyer involved is confronted with difficulties of legal translation. In both cases bilingual legal dictionaries could play an important role in the translating process by providing translation suggestions and information on the linguistic context of terms in the target language, such as specific noun-verb combinations, or typical collocations.

Alfred Schütz : une autre théorie de la pertinence et son application en traduction

Fachsprache ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Margarete Flöter-Durr ◽  
Thierry Grass
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
One Year

Despite the work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1989), the concept of relevance has not enjoyed the popularity it deserved among translators as it appears to be more productive in information science and sociology than in translation studies. The theory of relevance provides underpinnings of a unified account of translation proposed by Ernst-August Gutt. However, if the concept of relevance should take into account all parameters of legal translation, the approach should be pragmatic and not cognitive: The aim of a relevant translation is to produce a legal text in the target language which appears relevant to the lawyer in the target legal system, namely a text that can be used in the same way as the original source text. The legal translator works as a facilitator from one legal system into another and relevance is the core of this pragmatic approach which requires translation techniques like adaptation rather than through-translation or calque (in the terminology of Delisle/Lee-Jahnk/Cormier 1999). This contribution tries to show that relevance theory, which was developed in the field of sociology by Alfred Schütz, could also be applied to translation theory with the aim of producing a correct translation in a concrete situation. Some examples extracted from one year of the practice of an expert law translator (German-French) at the Court of Appeal in the Alsace region illustrate our claim and underpin an approach of legal translation and its heuristics that is both pragmatic and reflexive.

Translators’ and revisers’ competences in legal translation

Target ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Parra-Galiano
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assurance ◽  
Revision Process ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Professional Profile ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Professional Translator

Abstract This article proposes a hierarchy of translator and reviser competences in prototypical scenarios in legal translation with a view to determining the most appropriate revision foci to ensure translation quality. Built on a prior characterisation of the most common professional translator profiles in legal translation, the proposal for a hierarchy of competences derives from two premises: (1) The professional profile of those who translate and revise legal documents is very diverse in terms of competence and qualifications (training and experience), and (2) translation competence and specialist knowledge in legal fields (i.e., domain competence) are fundamental when revising to guarantee the quality of legal translations. The proposal is framed by quality assurance in legal translation through a revision process based on (1) the coherent management of the work of the translators and revisers involved in the translation project, and (2) the appropriate methodology for revision applied to legal translation by adapting the revision mode’s focus to ensure its effectiveness. Six common scenarios are identified in light of the translators’ profiles, for which revisers’ profiles are then proposed in order to detect any legal translation competence deficiencies among translators, and thus ensure quality.

Zu einigen problematischen Fragen der Fachsprachenvermittlung am Beispiel des Deutschunterrichts bei Juristen

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-167
Author(s):  
Linda Bišofa
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Language Selection ◽  
Group Members

This article deals with the subject of language teaching using the example of German lessons for lawyers. As part of the “Justice for Development” project, free language teaching was offered to judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police and other Latvian legal system employees in 2018. The language selection was limited to 3 foreign languages: English, German and French. Because it was teaching of the professional language (language for special purposes), no beginner groups were formed, and no beginner lessons offered. The participants should at least have knowledge of German at level A 2 with the prospect of offering the opportunity to further develop their knowledge at other levels. Before the beginning of the project, the needs assessment was also carried out internally and the teachers were presented the results of this analysis in a summarized form, where they could see the main topics and wishes of the participants. The following thematic groups were predominant: Civil Law, Commercial Law and Criminal Law. Most of the group members were judges. The main aims of the participants: to learn German were to be able to attend German conferences and to communicate privately, and to read legal documents. During the teaching process arose several problems, which were discussed in more detail in the article, which were the lack of appropriate teaching and learning materials, different fields of interest of the participants and also little experience in the legal field of the teacher. Working with original documents is still difficult in A2 level German classes. Existing textbooks specializing in legal language are difficult to access, limited number, published 10–20 years ago, are morally obsolete, and contain institutional and phenomenon designations that no longer exist. Materials published in Germany or on the Internet can present the German legal system, but in Latvia the judicial system differs. These materials can only be used in contrast. It is also advisable to use feature films about German judges and attorneys, where you can also learn the necessary legal vocabulary when relaxing. Co-operation between the lecturer and the group members is also highly recommended, as their rich legal experience enables them to improve the quality of German language lessons. The learning process should also emphasize the importance of autonomous learning and the differentiation/ individualization of teaching and learning.

scholarly journals Potential Ambiguity Translation Performances within Legal Language Institutional Nomenclature

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Diana Oţăt
Keyword(s):  
Target Language ◽  
Occurrence Rate ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Sales Contracts ◽  
Ambiguous Situation ◽  
The One ◽  
Term Performance

Abstract Motivated by a paradoxical corollary of ambiguities in legal documents and especially in contract texts, the current paper underpins a dichotomy approach to unintended ambiguities aiming to establish a referential framework for the occurrence rate of translation ambiguities within the legal language nomenclature. The research focus is on a twofold situation since ambiguities may. on the one hand, arise dining the translation process, generated by the translator’s lack of competence, i.e. inadequate use of English regarding the special nature of legal language, or. on the other hand, they may be simply transferred from the source language into the target language without even noticing the potential ambiguous situation, i.e. culture-bound ambiguities. Hence, the paper proposes a contrastive analysis in order to localize the occurrence of lexical, structural, and socio-cultural ambiguities triggered by the use of the term performance and its Romanian equivalents in a number of sales contracts.

scholarly journals Legal Language – Pragmatic Approaches to Its Interconnectivity with Legal Interpretation and Legal Translation1

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-438
Author(s):  
Ingrid Simonnaes
Keyword(s):  
Target Language ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Lay Persons ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Communicative Act ◽  
High Degree

The purpose of this paper is to enhance existing insights into the complex relationship between legal language, legal interpretation and legal translation that challenges the participants of a particular domain-specific communicative situation. This situation can be described as a complex communicative-cognitive procedure taking into consideration a pragmatic approach to reach its addressees on a continuum from lay persons to experts. The analysis of some “typical” examples shows (not surprisingly) that different kinds of knowledge are necessary in order to achieve a felicitous communicative act in which a high degree of specialist knowledge is of paramount importance to a successful result both in intra- and interlingual translation. The particular legal language under scrutiny, in other words German contrastive to Norwegian, form the basis for the analysis of the activity of translation in which the translator must be able to understand/interpret the text and must be aware of not taking the words at their “face value” to be able to render their meaning in the target language.

scholarly journals Legal Language and The Legal Translator

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Hanne Grøn
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
Conceptual Meaning

It is impossible to set up standards of translation performance and equivalence which will apply to any legal translation because the "languages of law" are as varied as the cases that reach the courts every day. Moreover, the translation of legal texts is often complicated by the lack of exact lexical equivalents in the TL's own legal system so that a transfer involves a high amount of "creative production". Obviously this production should be based on a profound extra-linguistic knowledge of both legal systems involved to avoid the pitfalls which the difference in conceptual meaning necessarily entails. Thus research into the TL's substantive law must be the first requirement in any legal translation context.

A study of legal translation from the perspective of error analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pi-Chan Hu ◽  
Le Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Reference Tools

AbstractIn this research, we established a small scale corpus with abstracts in English and Chinese from the law reviews of Taiwan. We identified problems found in these abstracts and classified them into several categories. After analyzing the problems, we found that translators are faced with numerous problems when translating legal texts: the influence of ordinary language, lack of reliable reference tools, insufficiency of legal knowledge, deficiency in the target language or source language, and the peculiar characteristics of legal language. These problems simply render the task of translating even more intricate. Strategies will be proposed to enhance the ability of legal translators and to help them to overcome these obstacles.

scholarly journals A Study of the Translation of English Legal Vocabulary under the Guidance of the Skopos Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Chunxu Qian
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Arduous Task ◽  
Skopos Theory ◽  
German School ◽  
Globalization Of Law

With the rapid development of society, most of countries around the world are all attaching importance to the construction of the rule of law. Many countries are drawing lessons from each others’ excellent legal achievements. Legal translation is an important branch of translation field and is playing an increasingly essential part in legal changes. With the deepening of China’s rule of law, China’s construction of legal system has stepped into a new phase. A large number of excellent Chinese legal documents are being translated into English, and many laws of Britain and America also have been translated into Chinese. The globalization of law has been an irreversible tendency. With the vigorous development of legal translation, how to correctly translate foreign legal achievements into Chinese has become a very arduous task for translators. The research field of legal translation includes the study of vocabulary, discourse, sentence and so on. The quality of translation of English legal vocabulary is key to deciding the quality of the whole translation of the legal text. Guided by the Skopos theory, which is a well-known theory put forward by German School of translation, the author makes a preliminary study on the translation of English legal vocabulary. By using and analyzing example sentences, the author makes summary about five characteristics of English legal vocabulary: common English vocabulary expressing legal meanings, use of ancient English vocabulary, parallel use of synonyms, use of modal verbs, use of professional terms and legal jargon. On the premise of conforming to the Skopos theory, four strategies of translating English legal vocabulary are summarized by the author according to these characteristics of English legal vocabulary, which are respectively fuzzy processing of English legal vocabulary, giving play to translators’ subjectivity, possessing consciousness of legal texts, correct use of domestication and foreignization. The author stresses the important role of translators’ subjectivity in the translation of English legal vocabulary, the correct use of domestication and foreignization and lastly links characteristics of English legal vocabulary, the Skopos theory and strategies of translation of English legal vocabulary effectively. The study has the certain innovation and reference significance in improving the quality of legal translation.

scholarly journals An Analysis about the Influence of Culture Transfer on Legal Translation from the Perspective of Intercultural Communication

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Chunxu Qian
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Transfer Process ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The World ◽  
Study Process

With the increasingly rapid social development, collusion and integration of different culture around the world, legal translation also becomes an exceedingly important tool in exchanges of laws. Legal translation, in essence, is a non-negligible aspect of intercultural communication, because legal translation is not only a transfer process from one language to another language, but also a study process of various legal cultures. In traditional researches about legal translation,most scholars only have a preference to pay more attention to the faithfulness and exactness of target language, but ignore the significance of cultural elements that are key limitations to the readiness of legal translation. Researchers can take advantage of culture transfer, which is a strategy to avoid misunderstandings in process of legal translation for the intention of improving the quality of legal texts. In this paper, legal translation refers to translation between English legal texts and Chinese legal texts.

scholarly journals A FEW NOTES ON THE LANGUAGE OF EU ANTITRUST LAW IN ENGLISH-POLISH TRANSLATION

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-174
Author(s):  
Anna Piszcz
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
English Language ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
Polish Language

Abstract In this paper I would like to present a brief description of the issues in English-Polish translation in the field of antitrust. Ever since Poland became a part of the broadening European integration, the Polish antitrust laws have been strongly “Europeanised”. Many new linguistic elements exist in both the Polish language of antitrust law and Polish legal language. Whatever the cause, the result is a decrease in the quality of the language. The issues of concern are divided into two groups. The first relates to producing Polish versions of EU legal documents concerning antitrust (part 2 of the paper). The second is related to translating English language of antitrust for the purposes of drafting national documents concerning antitrust, both legal documents and documents that are not legally binding (part 3 of the paper). I will then (in part 4 of the paper) turn to areas where a change is needed and propose measures that might be helpful in the current circumstances.

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