This long needed reference on the innumerable and increasing ways that the law intersects with translation and interpreting features essays by scholars and professions from the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, and Sweden. The essays range from sophisticated treatments of historical and hence philosophical variations in concept and practice to detailed practical advice on self-education. Essays show a particular concern for the challenges of courtroom discourse when the parties not only use different languages but operate from different cultural and legal traditions.

With contributions from world-class specialists this first book-length work looks at translation issues in forensic linguistics, where accuracy and cultural understandings play a prominent part in the legal process.

The translation of law has played an integral part in the interaction among nations in history and is playing a greater role in our increasingly interconnected world today. The book investigates legal translation in its many facets as an intellectual pursuit and a profession. It examines legal translation from an interdisciplinary perspective, covering theoretical and practical grounds and linguistic as well as legal issues. It analyses legal translation competence and various types of legal texts including contracts, statutes and multilateral legal instruments, presents a comparative analysis of the Common Law and the Civil Law and examines the case law from Canada, Hong Kong and the European Court of Justice. It attempts to demonstrate that translating law is a complex act that can enrich law, culture and human experience as a whole.

The book provides an overview of EU competition law with a focus on the main developments in Italy, Spain, Greece, Poland and Croatia and offers an in-depth analysis of the role of language, translation and multilingualism in its implementation and interpretation. The first part of the book focuses on the main developments in EU competition law in action, which includes legislation, case law and praxis. This part can be divided into two subparts: the private enforcement of EU competition law, and the cooperation among enforcers, i.e. the EU Commission, the national competition authorities and the national courts. Language is of paramount importance in the enforcement of EU competition law, and as such, the second part highlights legal linguistic skills, showcasing the advantages and the challenges of multilingualism, especially in the context of the predominant use of English as the EU drafting and vehicular language. The volume brings together contributions prepared and presented as part of the EU-funded research project “Training Action for Legal Practitioners: Linguistic Skills and Translation in EU Competition Law".

This volume investigates advances in the field of legal translation both from a theoretical and practical perspective, with professional and academic insights from leading experts in the field. Part I of the collection focuses on the exploration of legal translatability from a theoretical angle. Covering fundamental issues such as equivalence in legal translation, approaches to legal translation and the interaction between judicial interpretation and legal translation, the authors offer contributions from philosophical, rhetorical, terminological and lexicographical perspectives. Part II focuses on the analysis of legal translation from a practical perspective among different jurisdictions such as China, the EU and Japan, offering multiple and pluralistic viewpoints. This book presents a collection of studies in legal translation which not only provide the latest international research findings among academics and practitioners, but also furnish us with a new approach to, and new insights into, the phenomena and nature of legal translation and legal transfer. The collection provides an invaluable reference for researchers, practitioners, academics and students specialising in law and legal translation, philosophy, sociology, linguistics and semiotics.

One of the first attempts to present a comprehensive study of legal translation, this book is an interdisciplinary study in law and translation theory. It is not bound to any specific languages or legal systems, although emphasis is placed on translation between common law and civil law jurisdictions. The main focus is on the translation of texts which are authoritative sources of the law; examples are cited primarily from statutes, codes and constitutions (Canada, Switzerland and Belgium), as well as instruments of the European Union and international treaties and conventions. Dealing with theoretical as well as practical aspects of the subject matter, the author analyses legal translation as an act of communication in the mechanism of the law, thus making it necessary to redefine the goal of legal translation. This book is intended for both lawyers and linguists, translation theorists, legal translators and drafters, legal lexicographers, as well as teachers and students of translation.

Arabic-English-Arabic Legal Translation provides a groundbreaking investigation of the issues found in legal translation between Arabic and English. Drawing on a contrastive-comparative approach, it analyses parallel authentic legal documents in both Arabic and English to examine the features of legal discourse in both languages and uncover the different translation techniques used. In so doing, it addresses the following questions: What are the features of English and Arabic legal texts? What are the similarities and differences of English and Arabic legal texts? What are the difficult areas of legal translation between English and Arabic legal texts? What are the techniques for translating these difficult areas on the lexical and syntactic levels? Features include: A thorough description of the features of legal translation in both English and Arabic, drawing on empirical new research, corpus data analysis and strategic two-way comparisons between source texts and target texts Coverage of a broad range of topics including an outline of the chosen framework for data analysis, a historical survey of legal discourse developments in both Arabic and English and detailed analyses of legal literature at both the lexical and syntactic levels Attention to common areas of difficulty such as Shariah Law terms, archaic terms and model auxiliaries Many examples and excerpts from a wide selection of authentic legal documents, reinforced by practical discussion points, exercises and practice drills to encourage active engagement with the material and opportunities for hands-on learning. Wide-ranging, scholarly and thought-provoking, this will be a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates on Arabic, Translation Studies and Comparative Linguistics courses. It will also be essential reading for translation professionals and researchers working in the field.

This study concentrates on three major issues creating a basis for the making of the "Czech-English Law Dictionary with Explanations", namely language, including terminology, in both the Czech and Anglo-American systems of law; the process of legal translation; and the lexicographic method of producing a bilingual law dictionary. Terminology has been considered the most significant feature of language for legal purposes. It encompasses a wide range of special-purpose vocabulary and higher syntactic units, including legal jargon. Conceptual analysis is to be pursued whenever an identical term in the target language does not exist or its full equivalent is in doubt. Legal translation should be based primarily on comparative legal, linguistic and genre analysis in order to make the transfer of legal information as precise, accurate and comprehensible as possible. The primary objective of legal translation is for the target recipient to be provided as explicit, extensive and precise legal information in the target language as is contained in the source text, complemented (by the translator) with facts rendering the original information fully comprehensible in the different legal environment and culture. A dictionary which will help its users to produce legal texts in the target language should be founded upon a profound comparative legal and linguistic analysis that will (a) determine equivalents at the levels of vocabulary, syntax and genre, (b) select the appropriate lexicographic material to be included in the dictionary, and (c) create entries in a user-friendly manner.

Translation is subject to a complex and unique set of legal rules that govern its various practical and intellectual aspects. These rules derive from very different legal areas, such as intellectual property and labour law. While useful from a strictly legal point of view, the heterogeneity of sources operates as a major hurdle in terms of understanding the overall legal framework within which translation operates. This book offers a general overview of the legal rules applicable to different aspects of translation, allowing translators and other interested parties to form a broad and coherent picture of the rules applicable in this area. It draws on the provisions of the main legal systems of the world, as well as the basic international agreements relevant in this area, thus offering both a comparative perspective of the legal issues involved and a guide to relevant national legal rules. In addition to a description and analysis of the legal issues and rules involved, the book also presents hypothetical cases, with a discussion of the problems they pose and possible solutions. It explains the theoretical structure of the rules under discussion as well as their practical implications. The language and methodology of the book are sufficiently accessible to allow lawyers, translators and those who require translation work but do not have a formal legal background to follow the arguments presented.

Legal Translation and Bilingual Law Drafting in Hong Kong presents a systematic account from a cross-disciplinary perspective of the activities of legal translation and bilingual law drafting in the bilingual international city of Hong Kong and its interaction with Mainland China and Taiwan in the use of legal terminology. The study mainly examines the challenges posed to English-Chinese translation in the past three decades by elaborate drafting and terminological equivalence, and offers educational and research solutions. Its primary goals are to create legal Chinese that naturally accommodates common law concepts and statutes from the English legal system and to reconcile Chinese legal terms from the different legal systems adopted by Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan. The new directions in legal translation and bilingual law drafting in Hong Kong will have implications for other Chinese regions and for the world. The book is intended for scholars, researchers, teachers and students of legal translation and legal linguistics, legal translators, lawyers and legal practitioners who are engaged in translation, as well as all persons who are interested in legal language and legal translation.