I recently had the chance to meet with Hellenic Supreme Court Judge, Argyris Stavrakis at a conference in Athens. Stavrakis is the author of \u201cModern Greek Legal Language and Terminology\u201d (\u039d\u03b5\u03bf\u03b5\u03bb\u03bb\u03b7\u03bd\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae \u039d\u03bf\u03bc\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae \u0393\u03bb\u03ce\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u039f\u03c1\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03af\u03b1) currently in its third edition and available from P. N. Sakkoulas Press in Greek.<\/p>\n
Stavrakis himself has said that he was inspired to write the book \u201cbecause of the poor use of modern Greek in quite a few legal texts,\u201d something that professional GR\/EN legal translators will be quite familiar with. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The book is divided up into 3 sections.<\/p>\n
Section I presents the historical shift from purist to demotic Greek and explains many of the problems that exist in Greek legal language as a result of this shift.<\/p>\n
Section II outlines what \u2018modern Greek\u2019 means and what sort of language lawyers using \u2018modern Greek\u2019 should be writing. It explores numerous grammatical phenomena that are often the cause of problematic Greek legal writing.<\/p>\n
Section III focuses on legal terminology. \u00a0Stavrakis provides countless examples of the terminology problems that the shift from purist to demotic Greek has caused.\u00a0 He also raises the critical issue of how much purist Greek is really acceptable in Greek legal texts.<\/p>\n
Stavrakis\u2019 book is obviously very well-researched, with a wealth of footnotes citing linguists, grammarians and language experts to support his arguments.<\/p>\n
Although intended for lawyers rather than legal translators, this book is definitely a useful resource for GR\/EN legal translators.<\/p>\n
For those working into English, the clear rules for proper drafting presented here help translators understand what the \u2018correct\u2019 Greek should be and therefore provide a more accurate translation.<\/p>\n
For those working into Greek, the rules help translators produce grammatically correct, terminologically-consistent work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently had the chance to meet with Hellenic Supreme Court Judge, Argyris Stavrakis at a conference in Athens. Stavrakis is the author of \u201cModern Greek Legal Language and Terminology\u201d (\u039d\u03b5\u03bf\u03b5\u03bb\u03bb\u03b7\u03bd\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae \u039d\u03bf\u03bc\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae \u0393\u03bb\u03ce\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u039f\u03c1\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03af\u03b1) currently in its third edition and available from P. N. Sakkoulas Press in Greek. Stavrakis himself has said that he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[161,153,89,167],"tags":[204,171,172,173,176,177,179,171,173,172,176],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-161","category-153","category-89","category-167","tag-204","tag-171","tag-172","tag-173","tag-176","tag-177","tag-179"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jurtrans.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/978-960-420-432-8.jpg?fit=160%2C237&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5NEKd-9A","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/780\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurtrans.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}