Interpreting Intercepted Communication: A Sui Generis Translational Activity

Legal wiretapping has gained importance in law enforcement along with the development of information and communication technology. Understanding the language of intercepted persons is essential for the success of a police investigation. Hence, intercept interpreters, as we suggest calling them in this article, are hired. Little is known about this specific work at the interface between language and law. With this article, we desire to contribute to closing this gap by focussing particularly on the translational activity. Our study identifies a fragmented field of research due to the difficulty in accessing workers in this specific field who interpret in a highly confidential phase of criminal investigations. The findings, which are drawn from scarce studies and our empirical data derived from an online questionnaire for a pilot study in Switzerland, demonstrate the wide range of the performed activity intercept interpreting. This article is the first to present translational activity from the perspective of intercept interpreters. The activity differs in many ways from interpretation in court hearings or police interviews. Hence, we suggest categorising interlingual intercept interpretation as a translational activity sui generis and—since previous research has not done justice to the ethical and deontological questions that intercept interpretation raises—advocate for further transdisciplinary research in this field of translation.

Coercion to destroy other people’s money between sharia Jordan’s Civil Code: Comparative study: الإكراه على إتلاف مال الغير بين الشريعة الإسلامية والقانون المدني الأردني: دراسة مقارنة

This research deals with the issue of coercion to destroy the money of others in Islamic sharia and Jordanian civil law and the importance of this research is evident by showing the picture of the truth of the jurisprudential issues based on this type of coercion. And the sharia ruling in these pictures. And the problem of the research revolved around the sayings of scholars about the reality of coercion. The main objective of the study is to make a comparison between sharia and Jordanian civil law in this matter. As for the key words included in the research. They Are: coercion money destruction of money. Immoral coercion. And unresolved coercion. As for relying in this study on three main approaches. Namely: 1. the inductive approach for all the scientific subject: by referring to what I have available to me from language and fundamentals books. Branches and jurisprudential rules. And books on jurisprudential and law. 2 the analytical method for this available research material by presenting the sayings of scholars in Islamic law and Jordanian civil law 3. The comparative approach by presenting the saying of the four schools of thought and the Jordanian civil law 4 the attribution of the Quran to their place in the noble Quran and the output of the hadiths based on the two sahib al – Bukhari. Then the four Sunnah again and attributing the effects contained in this study to their books and Sayers with judging.to achieve this topic. I divided my research into two coats. The first requirement: clarifies the definition of language and law. the pillars and conditions of coercion. types of coercion. recourse and non – recourse coercion. Moral coercion. And the evidence for the existence of coercion from the holy Quran and the Sunnah. As for the second requirement. It death with the effect of coercion on destroying the money of others in Islamic sharia and Jordanian civil law in coercion.

Within and Beyond the Anthropology of Language and Law

This chapter examines why U.S. legal scholarship has been unable to make use of abundant empirical research on law and language within the field of anthropology. Specifically, linguistic anthropologists have disproven old theories still used by US legal philosophers to ground their analyses of legal language. These anthropologists have provided ample alternative foundations for theorizing how legal language works. After reviewing that research and contrasting outdated conceptions of legal language within legal academic scholarship, the chapter examines how metalinguistic assumptions that are built into legal thinking have actually discouraged legal theorists from incorporating more sophisticated and accurate conceptions of law’s language. While overcoming this obstacle may not be possible, the chapter concludes by urging both legal scholars and linguistic anthropologists to consider possible avenues for better communication. Updated insights from anthropological research on language and communication have much to offer legal scholars studying the language of law.

Legal Discourse as a Multi-Dimensional Integrated Phenomenon and Legal Linguistics as a Syncretic Science

The article introduces legal discourse as part of a complex communicative activity. It is an integrative interdisciplinary phenomenon on the border of jurisprudence and linguistics. The research objective was to establish the constituent parts of legal discourse, which includes legal texts, related scientific literature, and other documents. Legal linguistics is a generalizing discipline that studies the interaction of language and law. The line between legal discourse and other discourses is hard to define. Legal discourse is characterized by unified subjects, procedures, circumstances, and impersonality, that is, the absence of recipient and sender, hence the abundance of impersonal verb forms and impersonal constructions. Legal texts are devoid of national marks, and the vocabulary has equivalents in other languages. The present research was the first to designate a set of texts that make up legal discourse, i.e. texts of laws, decrees, scientific literature on legal matters, various legal documents, judicial texts, texts of interrogations, court speeches, expert opinion, etc. Although legal discourse and legal linguistics have different subjects and tasks, they share the same object, i.e. the interaction of language and law. Legal linguistics is an integrative science based on linguistics and legal theory, which uses achievements of philosophy, psychology, sociology, ethics, cognitive linguistics, pragmalinguistics, linguistic conflictology, etc.

The Possibility of Universal Semiotics of Law

The universality of human language above the diversity of vernaculars as theorized by Noam Chomsky creates the temptation to adapt the same idea to law. There are parallels between language and law, e.g., Latin language and Roman law, the universality, formality, and generativity of the two and the embeddedness of law in language. Chomsky’s universal generative grammar is applicable to law in a direct way but the theory is still extendable to semantics and pragmatics of law. The claim is that generating constructions of elemental constituents is an approved technique of law and jurisprudence as much as of linguistics. The pragmatic dimension of semiotics of law shows the significant contribution of law to consolidating social role of speech acts.

Hungarian Language and Law: Developing a Grammar for Social Inclusion, a Vocabulary for Political Emancipation. Special Issue (IJSL)—Editorial Preface

Having been invited by editor-in-chief, Professor Anne Wagner, to edit the present special issue, we decided to fulfil a longstanding wish to provide a panorama about the Hungarian Language and Law. Along with other ‘law and …’ movements, Law and Language has attracted a great deal of attention from subsequent generations of Hungarian academic lawyers, because the political transition served as a wonderful subject and context for scholarly papers and text books, for examining the putative or real influence of this or that popular social scientist or for undertaking literature overviews. Unfortunately, there have been relatively few academic papers that have sought to draw general conclusions from empirically well-founded case studies. In order to fill that important gap, this special issue has taken the opportunity to select only those interdisciplinary papers whose goals include an analysis of Hungarian legal discourse written from a critical angle and using critical empirical methodology. At the very outset of the editing process—back in 2018—for the purposes of this special issue we defined as ‘empirical’ any sufficiently coherent fact-based research that reflects the language of legal discourse. And ‘critical’ means an engagement with the values of the Rule of Law. This double methodological and axiological feature is manifest throughout the selected papers classified as ‘law and language’.