Excellent news as the LLM in Legal Translation is relaunched as a blended learning degree.Continue Reading..
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Making sense of adversarial interpreting – a seminarContinue Reading..
Eva Angelopoulou provides her overview of events for legal translators and interpreters held earlier this year by EULITA:Continue Reading..
On Thursday, 21 September, the University of Birmingham will host a seminar on ” Law, translation and migration: an enlightening relationship”. The event is free but requires pre-registration. The announcement about the event and the full programme are reproduced below:
“Challenges of legal translation have existed for a long time in international law and international relations. However, the intense process of globalization since the latter half of the 20th century has led to a rapid increase of international treaties and agreements, regional governance, international organizations, NGOs and courts as well as growing reliance on international arbitration.
Much of this globalized legal work is performed through translation. In spite of its long history and recent proliferation, legal translation remains underexplored, particularly from a socio-legal perspective. In fact, research on the intersection of law and translation has tended to concentrate on a rather limited agenda with broader issues being neglected. Therefore, migration is an appropriate and innovative lens to pursue this broader investigation and to tackle the following key issues: what are the various effects of globalisation on this intersection? What is the impact of legal translation on the acceptance of concepts and ideas into other (legal) cultures? What are the effects of the ‘translated’ word on the perception of the very phenomena it portrays?
This seminar will not only further our understanding of the intersection of law and translation, but it will advance knowledge and analysis on migration, an issue central to our times. By addressing the intersection of law and translation in this way, it will reveal novel questions, effects or links to migration, thus advancing the intellectual agenda of the socio-legal community.”
Programme
Morning
Workshop 1 – Language and migration – A complex relationship
Professor Ann-Marie Fortier – University of Lancaster (Department of sociology):
‘On (not) speaking English: colonial legacies in language requirements for British citizenship’
Professor Eleanor Spaventa – University of Durham (School of Law):
“Language and the internal market”
Professor François Grin – Université de Genève (Faculty of translation and interpreting)
“Language, mobility and inclusion in the EU: the MIME project”
Workshop 2 – Portrayal of the nexus translation and migration
Professor Lucja Biel – University of Warsaw (Faculty of applied linguistics):
‘Translation and the law: A case study of a corpus of (legal) translation on migration’
Professor Loredana Polezzi – University of Cardiff (School of Modern Languages):
‘The portrayal in contemporary literary texts of the relationship between migration, translation and the law”
Afternoon:
Workshop 3 – ‘Translating migration’ in practice
Professor Angela Creese & Professor Adrian Blackledge – University of Birmingham (School of Education):
‘Translation in everyday practice”
Dr Frances Rock – University of Cardiff (School of English, communication and philosophy)
“Just because she’s a solicitor that doesn’t make her any better than you”: Law, translation and migration in confronting disadvantage through enlightened relationships in legal advice”
Dr Elpida Loupaki – Aristotle University of Thessalonika (Department of French studies and literature):
‘Translating migration – beyond terminology’
Piotr Wegorowski – University of Cardiff (School of English, communication and philosophy)
“Translating institutional procedures: the case of community policing”
source: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/law/events/2017/law-translation-migration.aspx
![Billis, Emmanouil (ed.): The Greek Penal Code. English translation by Vasiliki Chalkiadaki and Emmanouil Billis. Introduction by Emmanouil Billis. Berlin, Duncker & Humblot 2017, 256 p. [ISBN 978-3-86113-794-8 (Max-Planck-Institut), ISBN 978-3-428-15230-8 (Duncker & Humblot)].](https://i1.wp.com/jurtrans.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/0200x0300.jpg?resize=150%2C230)
The Greek Penal Code
This new work “includes a systematic introduction to the basic characteristics and fundamental principles of criminal law and the Penal Code of Greece. As such, it is an indispensable resource for legal professionals, comparatists, and international scholars interested in the Greek criminal justice system”.
I would also add ‘legal translators’ to that list. As I pointed out in a recent blogpost, an essential tool for any professional legal translator is a translation of the key codes into his/her working languages. This can solve many terminological issues and promote consistency, while also aiding comprehension by the target audience.
The new book is the result of a project entitled “Translation of the Greek Penal Code into English”, which was run at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. The contents of the book can be viewed here.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that the Greek Penal Code has been translated into English. The Code was previously translated in 1973 by N. Lolis, prefaced by an introduction to Greek criminal law by Giorgios Mangakis, and published as part of the American Series of Foreign Penal Codes. Times move on though. As the publisher’s blurb for the new book by Billis points out, criminal law is an area that evolves and develops over time and, “the individual definitions of criminal offences, [have] been widely amended several times. Efforts have always been made to adapt the law to modern socio-ethical, political, economic, and international developments”. So the new translation is a welcome addition to the tools at the legal translator’s disposal.
