I just came across a Workshop on Precedent in EU Law: the linguistic aspect. Many thanks to the Words to Deeds blog for the information.
As mentioned in a recent post, glossaries can be useful aids in legal translation and in legal interpretation. As the number of migrants/refugees entering Greece and other European countries increases, could initiatives similar to the Canadian multilingual glossary outlined below provide a replicable model for improving the quality of legal translation and court interpreting?Continue Reading..
Back in June 2015 I attended the Transius Conference on legal and institutional translation hosted by the University of Geneva.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be summarising some of the main points made by speakers based on notes taken at the conference. The idea is to convey a rough flavour of the main ideas presented at the conference. This is the second blogpost in the series…Continue Reading..
Peter M. Tiersma’s seminal book ‘Legal Language’ discusses the historical development of legal English as a special “sublanguage”, and analyses many of the key features of legal language which can be of use to anyone involved in legal translation.
As we’ve said this week already, the verb ‘shall’ is often used in English legal documents and legal translators working into English need to be able to use the verb correctly. Many people have suggested getting rid of it altogether. This article examines the continuing need for ‘shall’.
Click to access Banishing-Shall-from-Business-Contracts-ACLA.pdf
The verb ‘shall’ and other modal verbs are frequently found in legal documents in English. In legal translations, the legal translator needs to be able to correctly employ deontic modality. Read this interesting paper on the functions of modal verbs in European and British Legal Documents.Continue Reading..
In yesterday’s post, the article referred to set out some thoughts about the nature of legal translation in the Greek-English combination and some of the difficulties translators face. One of the issues raised was that other languages have often influenced English legal language.
The same is true of Greek legal language to a certain extent.
LEGAL TERMINOLOGY AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS by Maria Botti
Legal terms, most of the time, do not represent objects with a physical aspect, but legal concepts which lawyers in different times and places have named differently. Should legal terminology be influenced by time and place? Which is the ‘correct’ choice of the word, when we translate from Greek into Anglo-Saxon legal language? When is it not unethical to approach the target-language more and leave our own behind? The answer does not only depend upon the most important person of the reader, but also on the approach we take concerning how our own system is presented.
Click here for the full article in Greek: http://www.eleto.gr/download/Conferences/4th%20Conference/4th_24-02-KanellopoulouBotti.pdf
English legal terminology: Practice on selected legal texts, edited by C. Stamelos is available in Greek from Nomiki Vivliothiki Press.Continue Reading..
