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Groot, Gerard-René de --- "Legal Translation" [2006] ELECD 189; in Smits, M. Jan (ed), "Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law

Editor(s): Smits, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420130

Section: Chapter 38

Section Title: Legal Translation

Author(s): Groot, Gerard-René de

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

38 Legal translation
Gerard-René de Groot


1 Introductory remarks
The issue of the translation of legal information is one of the core ques-
tions of comparative law. On the one hand, comparative lawyers frequently
have to provide information on rules in force in a certain legal system in a
language which is not (one of) the legal language(s) of the legal system
involved. In such a case comparative lawyers are directly confronted with
the difficulty of the translation of legal terminology. On the other hand,
there is a second relationship between comparative law and the translation
of legal terminology: if translators have to translate the content of legal
documents (contracts, statutory provisions, books and articles on legal
topics etc.) they are constantly confronted with comparative law, because
the comparison of the content of the legal terminology of the source legal
system and of concepts behind the legal terminology of a legal system
which uses the target language as legal language should be their core activ-
ity during the translating process.
The specific problems of the translation of legal terminology are caused
by the system-specificity of the legal language. This system-specificity has
as a consequence that within a single language there is not only one legal
language, as, for instance, there is a single chemical, economic or medical
language within a certain language. A language has as many legal languages
as there are systems using this language as a legal language (de Groot,
1999a, pp. 12­14; ...