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Comparative Legilinguistics
vol. 32/2017
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/cl.2017.32.2
LEGAL TRANSLATION –
A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ENDEAVOUR
Juliette SCOTT
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies – Institute of Modern
Languages Research
School of Advanced Study, University of London
juliette.scott@sas.ac.uk
Abstract: Legal translation is a highly skilled task. It has even been
described as the “ultimate linguistic challenge” (Harvey 2002: 177).
However, law firms or corporations that procure translations from self-
employed translation practitioners often find the intricacies of the task
difficult to perceive. Following extensive fieldwork examining how legal
translation is commissioned and performed in ‘outstitutional’ contexts, I have
developed a multidimensional model which illustrates the legal translator’s
textual agency, aimed at conveying the complexities of translation
performance to clients and other stakeholders. It may also serve to train
fledgling legal translators, and to heighten practising translators’ awareness
of their overall task. The impetus for the model sprang primarily from
findings of serious information asymmetry and goal divergence in the
market, and evidence that actors involved do not grasp (a) the need for legal
translators to be fully briefed, or (b) the layers of skills involved.
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
38
Key words: legal translation; legal translators’ agency; cognitive processes;
tesseract model; outstitutional contexts, legal systems, legal genres, fitness-
for-purpose, language and law
Streszczenie: Tłumaczenie prawne jest zadaniem wymagającym wysokich
kwalifikacji. Zostało nawet opisane jako „największe wyzwanie językowe”
(Harvey 2002: 177). Jednak firmy prawnicze lub korporacje, które zamawiają
tłumaczenia od samozatrudnionych tłumaczy często nie zauważają zawiłości
tego zadania. Po przeprowadzeniu szeroko zakrojonych badań terenowych,
analizując, w jaki sposób zlecane jest tłumaczenie prawne i przeprowadzane
w kontekście „pozainstytucjonalnym”, opracowałam wielowymiarowy
model, który ilustruje złożoności wykonania tłumaczenia. Może również
służyć kształceniu początkujących tłumaczy prawniczych i zwiększaniu
świadomości tłumaczy na temat ich zadania.
Słowa kluczowe: tłumaczenie prawne; procesy poznawcze; model tesseract;
konteksty pozainstytucjonalne, systemy prawne, gatunki prawne, przydatność
do celu, język i prawo
Introduction
During a recent global survey of the commissioning and
performance of legal translation in “outstitutional” contexts (Scott
2016), it became apparent that the market is severely impaired.
Translator briefing is on many occasions negligible and insufficient.
In the procurement and ‘production’ process, legal translation
practitioners are frequently relegated to an outlying position. Goal
divergences and information asymmetries are rife. Moreover, there is
minimal awareness of the extent of competencies required of the
professional. In such a setting, it appeared worthwhile to seek out
ways of better communicating with market stakeholders – to benefit
not only translators, but also their clients via ensuing improvements in
quality. In this paper, I focus on the communication of competencies. I
explore the legal translator’s textual agency – their intervention in
performance of translation (sub-)tasks – seen as the deft handling of
four aspects: language, legal system(s), textual genre, and text
purpose. Each of these aspects will be reviewed and, as a result of the
inherent interdisciplinarity of the legal translation endeavour,
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
39
wherever opportune mention will be made of related fields of
scholarship. Owing the large amount of ground to be covered in the
present enterprise, each aspect will be reviewed very succinctly.
I must stress that although these four aspects are discussed
separately and in a certain order owing to the standard academic
paper’s format restrictions, this does not mean that I consider a
sequential ordering of the translator’s intervention to be appropriate.
On the contrary, the cognitive processes involved are of necessity
handled quasi-concurrently and contingently in actual performance of
the task. For this reason, having appraised a number of portrayals and
representations in the course of my research, I propose a
multidimensional model that aims to encapsulate the complexities of
legal translation performance in practice and communicate them to
clients, trainee and practising translators, and other market and
educational actors.
Conveying the complexities of legal translation
performance
The legal translator’s agency as it relates to the text is highly
complex. At a first level, that of source and target language, the legal
translator’s task is analogous to that of translators in other domains,
although situated within a specific segment of general language: legal
discourse. Such discourse presents a host of linguistic particularities to
be mediated.
At the second level, the legal translator’s work becomes even
more complex, as they ‘negotiate’ solutions between source and target
legal system(s) and their respective concepts, which may be widely
divergent.
Third, the legal translator must ensure that the given source
genre or subgenre is appropriately transposed into the target genre,
e.g., taking into account the relevant sublanguage, macrostructure
and/or layout.
The fourth and final layer of difficulty in the legal translator’s
work is to ensure that the purpose of the source text is correctly
reflected in the target text, if such a reflection has been requested by
the client. Alternatively, the target text may serve a different purpose.
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
40
For example, if the source text is binding legislation, its translation
may be requested for a “public website” – and the commissioner will
then need to specify whether they require the translator to produce a
text that is accessible to the general public, and to an extent ‘redraft’
the text, or whether the translation should be a literal reflection of the
source, such as might be produced for study by scholars of
comparative law.
Let us consider this highly complex negotiation or ‘juggling’
of what is effectively eight multifaceted aspects by the legal translator
– four on the source side and four on the target side – as they progress
through their work. The legal translator does not negotiate these
multifaceted sub-tasks – let us represent them as cubes – in a linear
manner. As mentioned in my introduction, they are handled quasi-
simultaneously: time is therefore a non-excludable factor, and we may
further specify and refer to “relative simultaneity” – in simpler terms n
operations happening at the same time but in different frames of
reference.
Having searched exhaustively for an adequate model, and
bearing in mind the points raised by Chesterman (2013) in his chapter
on modelling translation processes, I should like to refer to a concept
from mathematics – that of the tesseract, also known as hypercube.
The tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube – in other
words the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square (Darling
2004: 316), where time is the fourth dimension. Given that time is one
of the dimensions, a static geometrical representation (even if it were
three-dimensional) is totally inadequate to model the figure. I
therefore need to include here an animated video model
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8-cell.gif#/media/File:8-
cell-orig.gif).
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
41
Figure 1: Animated model of a tesseract (.gif format).
The rotating perspective projections being wrapped and
unwrapped – constantly interacting with and mapping on to one
another – can be a convenient way to convey the legal translator’s
mental processes and the indissociable and synchronous nature of the
fields of their textual agency. The shifting net of the polytope’s
vortices, mapping onto each other in an ever-evolving way
accentuates the dynamic transformation of the text from source to
target. I must add, however, that in this case the tesseract takes no
account of the mathematical arguments involved; it is used purely to
model complex cognitive activity.
1
Figure 2 below is a simplified
representation of that polytope.
1
If this seems incongruous to the reader, it is worth noting that neural
network modelling is at the heart of research leading technological advances
in machine translation and speech recognition (e.g., Sutskever, Vinyals and
Le 2014). For a visualisation of how billions of neurons interact in neural
networks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyNkAuX29OU.
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
42
Figure 2: A simplified representation of the tesseract of the legal translator’s
textual agency.
In the above figure – a venture to set down the
multidimensional model on paper for the purposes of discussion – the
flows represented by the arrowheads further extrapolate the legal
translator’s evolving quest to negotiate and transfer the linguistic/legal
systemic-conceptual/generic/purposive aspects of the source and
target texts in the most appropriate way. The myriad directionality of
the flows seeks to underline the fact that translators’ agency may itself
have an effect on the fields involved. For example, “contact-induced
issues” arise in Eurolects – EU legal language variants generated
through translation and/or transposition (Strandvik 2015; Biel 2014).
Similarly, textual agency through translations may affect legal
systems. A good example of this is the case law of the Court of Justice
of the European Union (McAuliffe 2013). Although the practice of
“genre bending” (Bhatia 2014) has been evoked mainly in the context
of changing societal values and practices (Garzone and Ilie 2014), the
bending of legal genres may also occur through the ‘weight’ of or
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
43
availability/access through translation: e.g., arrest warrants (Garrido
Rodríguez 2012); Pakistani birth certificates in Spanish translation
(Mayoral Asensio 2003) – or crime fiction in the case of Nordic noir.
Lastly, whilst the translator cannot retroactively affect the purpose of
the source text, their very enterprise will greatly impact the extent to
which the target text purpose is fulfilled.
I have already determined that time constitutes the fourth
dimension in this model composed of three-dimensional ‘cubes’
representing the multi-faceted textual and contextual aspects
negotiated during legal translation performance. In order to embrace
fully the ‘negotiating flows’ in the previous paragraph we may take
the model a step further and introduce a fifth dimension. I suggested
earlier in this section that the translators’ sub-tasks are handled in a
relatively simultaneous manner – but they are also handled
contingently. Moving away from the tesseract for a moment, let us
consider the gravitational pull exerted by planets in a solar system,
each with its own specific path. In the tesseract model, we can
embrace such pull or influence by introducing the idea of “mapping
tension”. Such tension allows the model to take into account the fact
that the language, legal system, genre, or purpose may have a greater
or lesser influence in different translation situations.
Readers will note that in this paper I do not enter into
discussions of translation or linguistic equivalence, and limit myself to
a brief review of scholarship concerning legal equivalence. In view of
my focus here on cognitive “juggling”, I have adopted less
controversial terms such as “flows”, “convey”, and “negotiate”. As
grounds for this approach I refer readers to Šarčević 1997; Biel 2009;
Snell-Hornby 1988/1995; Gentzler 1993; and Baker 2001: 5-6. I take
the view that the term ‘equivalence’ itself sits uneasily within a
legal translation context: its inherent duality is (a) at odds with the
multidimensional nature of the task, and (b) needs to embrace the
basic tenets of comparative law (e.g., De Groot 2006: 423-433).
Moreover, it is likely to embroil communication with non-specialist
market players owing to its absolutist connotations. Indeed, Cao
claims that “no exact equivalence or complete identity of
understanding can be expected or is really necessary” (2007: 35),
while Kjaer observes that “[e]stablishing equivalence between legal
texts across languages is as impossible as squaring a circle” (2008:
67). As Gémar, whose work on the theory and practice of legal
translation extends over several decades, recounts: “So, is any
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
44
translation method to be recommended that guarantees full
equivalence? Clearly not, and in legal translation even less so.” (2012:
71, my translation, maintaining original emphasis).
2
Hacking through the thicket of legal language(s)
The translation of a legal text transfers the natural language in
which it is written into the natural language required. This aspect of
the legal translator’s work is similar to the work performed by
translators in all fields. As in many other translation specialisms, the
source and target language variants – for example, Belgian French,
Swiss French or Canadian French – should be specified. This is
especially important in legal texts, because of the related problems
engendered by differences in source and target legal systems, styles,
concepts, and terminology.
In his reference work on legal linguistics Mattila points out
that, whilst legal language is based on “ordinary” or “natural”
language, it exhibits: “linguistic norms (phraseology, vocabulary,
hierarchy of terms and meanings)” and specific “morphosyntactic,
semantic and pragmatic” features (2006: 3). Owing to limitations of
space, I will discuss only a small selection of these features with
particularly strong relevance for legal translation. Whilst the
examples of general linguistic features of legal discourse in this
section are mainly taken from English, there are, of course, parallels in
other languages (e.g., Mattila 2006; Galdia 2009).
Collocations play a large part in the acceptance or refusal of
translated legal texts by those receiving them (as noted, e.g., by Biel
2010b). To stress their significance in legal discourse: “collocations
with a specialised legal sense are the types of word combinations that
are most frequently found in legal texts of all genres” (Yunus and
Awab 2011: 159, citing Kjaer 2007: 509). As well as arising in
running legal text, collocations may occur in terms referring to legal
2
In the French it reads: “Alors, existe-t-il une méthode de traduction
garantissant l’équivalence totale à recommander ? De toute évidence, non, et
en traduction juridique, encore moins.” (Gémar 2012: 72, original
emphasis).
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
45
concepts or in legal maxims. I use the term “collocations” to refer to
“recurrent word combinations” (God-Roszkowski 2006: 139), also
called clusters, lexical bundles, word partners, compound terms, n-
grams or colligations.
3
Collocations are not only recurrent in legal texts, they are
quite inflexible. There is a specific type of ‘inseparable’ collocation in
the legal domain: doublets/triplets or binomials/multinomials, e.g.,
from Brazilian Portuguese: “perdas e danos”. Unlike many terms that
can collocate with others or be used alone, in certain contexts these
cannot be used without their ‘partner’. The historical reasons for and
value of such apparent redundancy will not be discussed here (see
Tiersma 2000). A practical example raised by a translator participating
in a 2011 study (Scott 2016: 64) shows why collocations are important
in legal translation: a translator may know part of a target-language
term, but not its collocate – such as whether to use “hold harmless
from” or “hold harmless against” (or indeed “hold harmless from and
against” – the term often contains the doublet). Metaphorical
expressions may be appended to this group as they too are composed
of several lexical units and occur within a close span of a word. They
will be discussed later in this section.
In a number of cultures, perhaps one of the most obvious
features of legal discourse to neophytes is the use of archaic language:
compound adverbs such as “heretofore” or “therein”, and
prepositional phrases such as “notwithstanding” and “pursuant to”
(Alcaraz and Hughes 2002: 7-9). Tiersma refers to “antiquated
morphology” (e.g., “witnesseth”) and “formulaic subjunctives” (i.e.,
“be it known”) (2000: 87-95). A related feature, owing to the origins
of many legal systems and some ‘cross-fertilisation’, is the presence
of Latinisms, although the frequency of their use depends on the
natural language or legal culture in question.
Translation issues may also arise with terms that are
monosemic, e.g., “estoppel”, “tort”, or “usufruct”; and those that are
polysemic, with separate everyday meanings such as “consideration”
meaning payment, “construction” meaning interpretation, or “issue”
meaning heirs. When translated, as Alcaraz and Hughes point out,
terms may move from being monosemic to polysemic and vice versa
(2002: 17).
3
No distinction will be drawn between these terms here, as such discussions
are beyond the scope of this paper. I include phrasal verbs in the same group.
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
46
While the terms above cause confusion because different
concepts can be expressed with the same word, confusion in legal
discourse can also arise, particularly when translated, as a result of the
use of synonyms as ‘redundant’ words, occurring in multinomial
expressions (often strictly collocated), or as a result of drafting style –
the practice of “elegant variation”. This may cause issues in
translation – for instance where a synonym does not exist in the target
language, or problems of understanding where textual cohesion and/or
the drafter’s intention is not clear, or where a translator elects to
‘clarify’ by replacing occurrences of synonyms with the same word,
thus unilaterally eliminating ambiguity in the source text. Partial
synonymity further complicates matters.
Despite some evidence of a shortening in recent years (Barnes
2016), long and complex sentences remain a prominent feature of
some legal genres, as do unusual word order, the omission of articles,
nominalisation, passivisation, use of “shall”, and layers of embedded
clauses. Such sentences may cause translators difficulty in deciphering
anaphora, and in maintaining cohesion and coherence. Depending on
the language pair in question, some measure of ‘localisation’ may be
needed, according to the intended purpose of the translated text.
Metaphor also figures widely in many genres of legal
discourse. I tend to disagree with Mattila when he holds that “in
modern legal language, metaphors in particular are rare” – he himself
asserts that “[a]dvocates in the Romance countries use these images
fairly often” (2006: 75-76). Vespaziani goes as far as to claim that
“there is no such a thing as a non-metaphorical legal language” (2009:
1). Similarly, M. R. Smith found that metaphor was so widely used
and studied in legal discourse that he set out to identify different
“levels of metaphor” (2007: 921). Unfortunately for legal translators,
metaphorical language is also highly challenging to translate (e.g.,
Schäffner 2004).
My final point in this short selection of legal linguistic
features that are particularly sensitive in translation concerns rhetoric
and rhetorical devices – essential linguistic tools for lawyers in many
legal cultures. To cite a few examples: “paradoxes”, “deliberate
stylistic faults, plays on words”, “surprise arguments”, and “deliberate
howlers” (Mattila 2006: 38-39). Additionally, multiple negatives,
layered embedding of clauses, and ambiguous anaphora can all be
called upon to muddy the waters. Such confusing mechanisms are in
danger of multiplying their effects when this kind of discourse needs
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
47
to be translated, particularly if the translator is not informed whether
the intended end-user is ‘friend or foe’ – for example whether the
target text is for the adverse party in litigation or for a colleague.
Equivocality and language risk
“Law is language and language is imprecise” (S. A. Smith
1995, citing Wesel 1992). The latter phrase was not, as one might
imagine, uttered by a translator lamenting their lot, but by a law
professor. There is a huge body of literature and constant debate on
the interpretation or construction of the law. Apart from the possibility
of ambiguous meanings being conferred to terms by those enunciating
them, we must also add the complexity of what those receiving them
understand. This is clearly explained by Engberg in the context of
statutory interpretation and in a critical analysis of strong language
theory: “The problem is that the meaning of texts can only exist as a
construction in the minds of individuals, built on the basis of
perceived underspecified textual signs and existing mental models”;
hence “only if sender and receiver have near identical systems are they
able to understand words in the same way” (2004: 1142).
Linguistic indeterminacy is broken down by Endicott (2000)
into the following terms, inter alia: imprecision; incompleteness;
incommensurability; immensurability; contestability; family
resemblances (relating to common sets of features); and dummy
standards (provisions presupposing a standard but not laying down a
standard), while linguistic indeterminacy in American statutes has
been categorised by Solan, using examples from case law, into areas
such as “syntactic ambiguity, semantic ambiguity, ambiguity of
reference and vagueness” (2011: 2). These analyses, however, draw
examples mainly from the interpretation of laws by the courts rather
than from texts drafted by lawyers such as contracts or pleadings
where indeterminacy and equivocality may even be strategic.
Indeterminacy may arise not only out of wording, but also out
of choice of language or language variant. There is a growing area of
legal research devoted to language risk examining, for example, which
party carries such risks of interpretation in contract litigation, or what
happens when terms cross borders. This is referred to by French
comparatists as “risque linguistique” (e.g., Mauro 1998), and in
German as “Sprachrisiko”. A well-known example is the “Socks
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
48
Case” in German case law.
4
Whilst there are legislative protections in
place regarding language and the right to a defence, under private law
where parties are free to choose their language regime, either the
language of one party or the other, or a third-party neutral language,
may be selected and various issues of conflicting interpretation can
arise. The various types of ambivalence described above may be
exacerbated when translated, as exemplified by Salmi-Tolonen when
discussing the language of contracts: “Words are not containers whose
contents are transferred from one interlocutor to another […]
unchanged” (2006: 86).
The potential risks of plain language
For some years now, plain language movements,
5
the impetus
for which came, in English-speaking jurisdictions, to a large extent
from Mellinkoff (1963), have been campaigning to ‘simplify’ legal
language – often referred to in that context as legalese – and, inter alia,
render it more accessible to the general public. However, some legal
scholars such as Phillips hold that “on the contrary, the development
and maintenance of the law’s special language can be justified” (2003,
preface). Offering a wide range of suggestions for the improvement of
legal drafting, Pollman also stands in favour of an informed approach
to legal jargon (2002), as does Crump (2002). A recent and ongoing
study by Barnes (2016) provides a thorough inventory of scholarly
and institutional research on plain language in legislative contexts.
A recurrent concern by those hostile to plain language
approaches is the “under-specification of legal scope” – i.e., the risk
that plain language may in fact infringe rights, especially in common
law jurisdictions where laws and legal documents are subject to
interpretation by the courts, by handing power over to individual
judges (Bhatia 2010: 9; Solan 2011). To address calls for
simplification without compromising legal robustness, Bhatia has
made an alternative proposal: the “easification” of legal language
(e.g., 2010). This aims to make legal texts more accessible to their
“intended readership”, without compromising the “depth of
4
Appellate Court (Oberlandesgericht) Hamm, 8 February 1995 [11 U
206/93]. See also Jayme 1995: 189-191; Déal 2004.
5
Such as the international movement Clarity (http://www.clarity-
international.net).
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
49
specification” (Bhatia 2010: 10-13) that might occur if the text were
simplified.
In any event, whatever their own view on plain language, the
legal translator must not unilaterally render legal discourse plainer and
thereby potentially distort the legal meaning and legal scope of the
text: it is essential that they adhere to their brief. Hence a legal
translator cannot permit themselves to be a gatekeeper of public
access to justice – in other words if the source text consists of dense,
unreadable legalese then, subject to a sensitive negotiation of what is
appropriate in that target language, it should stay that way in the target
text, unless there has been a specific instruction to the contrary in the
brief. This is an important matter to be addressed within legal
translator training programs, and can often be a problem with
inexperienced translators or those that accept legal work without being
specialised in the field.
Contending with cross-jurisdictional asymmetries
Unfortunately for legal translators, the world does not have a
unique legal system. Although similarities exist enabling groups to be
composed, experts cannot agree on a single classification of the
world’s various systems into “families” (e.g., Hertel 2009; Monjean-
Decaudin 2010b; Samuel 2014). To further complicate matters, a legal
system “may, for example, be allocated to a different legal family as
regards civil law than as regards administrative law. Even the law of
companies may be characterised differently from the general civil
law” (Hertel 2009: 2). Thus in addition to asymmetries between legal
systems themselves, there may be inconsistencies between “different
branches and fields of law” (Pommer 2008: 18). Comparative legal
scholars may adopt a “macro” approach – comparing a whole system
with another – but they may also adopt a “micro” or “meso” approach
drilling down into individual legal concepts within each system and
examining their similarities and differences. For translators, the
differences between superficially and seemingly similar legal concepts
add more layers of complexity to their task, and the latter conceptual
comparisons may be of greater service to them when translating a
specific term – albeit always seen in the context of the wider system in
question.
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
50
Concerning the ways in which boundaries between legal
systems are crossed, a distinction can be drawn between “vertical” and
“horizontal” legal translation. Monjean-Decaudin (2010b), building
upon Folena’s work (1991), determines “vertical legal translation” as
translation of legal texts in a language seen to be of higher status into
a language deemed of lower status, such as European legislation to be
transposed into the law of the Member States, while she describes
“horizontal legal translation” as a communication channel opened
between two legal systems and two languages of ostensibly equal
status. Monjean-Decaudin gives three examples of contexts in which
horizontal translation might occur: (a) where individuals or firms
assert and wish to have recognized rights or legal status by a second
State’s authorities; (b) to acquire knowledge of or to disseminate a
given country’s laws; (c) legal translation carried out on behalf of the
judiciary – either to facilitate dialogue among different States’
authorities, or between judicial authorities and a citizen who does not
understand the language of proceedings (2010b: 702-703). Lamalle,
on the other hand, views horizontal translation as the transfer of legal
concepts into another legal language or system (2014: 299), and,
following Flusser (2002: 194), sees vertical translation as the transfer
of a concept from one field of knowledge to another: e.g., “from
theology to law” (Lamalle 2014: 299).
It is important to note that “legal terminology [and legal
discourse] is system-bound, tied to the legal system rather than to
language” and hence “multiple legal languages can exist within the
boundaries of a natural language, depending on how many legal
orders make use of that same language” (Pommer 2008: 18). For
example one natural language, French, is used to vehicle different
many legal systems – inter alia, those of Belgium, France,
Luxembourg, Monaco, some African countries and Switzerland, not to
mention its use as the working language of the case law of the Court
of Justice of the European Communities. Equally, there are
“plurilingual states and regions with different legal systems or a mixed
legal system” “such as Canada, India, Sri Lanka, Israel, South Africa,
and, more recently, China (Hong Kong and Macau)” (Šarčević 2012:
193). On the other hand, translations may in some cases, as noted by
Galdia, also be carried out between closely related languages such as
Danish and Norwegian, where the countries also have similar legal
systems, and issues related to legal systems/concepts may even
disappear completely in multilingual States with a single legal system
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
51
such as Finland (2003: 2). Glanert and Legrand note that “the extent
of the challenge is much wider than might readily be expected” and
point out that one may even need to “translate English – thus,
“privacy” in the UK is not “privacy” in the US” (2013: 516).
Systemic and/or conceptual asymmetries are thus a major
constraint on the legal translation process. In De Groot’s view, “the
level of difficulty of a legal translation does not primarily depend on
linguistically determined differences, but rather on structural
differences between legal systems” (translated from the German and
cited by Galdia 2003: 2). Several translation scholars have called upon
the field of comparative law to advise how legal translators should
negotiate differences between systems and concepts (e.g., Pommer
2008; Šarčević 1997; 2012; Monjean-Decaudin 2012, Sandrini 1999).
Other scholars have also made efforts to categorise types of
terminological equivalence across legal systems. Šarčević suggests the
following three categories: “near equivalence”, “partial equivalence”,
and “non-equivalence”, and holds that the above enable categories to
be changed “depending on the use of the term in context” (1997: 237).
Nielsen, referring to a projected bilingual dictionary of contract law,
goes into more detail: he lists full equivalence “where an L1
equivalent has exactly the same semantic and pragmatic properties as
its L2 lemma”, but adds that instances of such equivalence are “few
and far between”; partial equivalence which he subdivides into three
sets; and zero equivalence where there is no corresponding legal
concept in the foreign system in question – he adds, however,
concerning this category that the lack of a corresponding concept does
not mean that a “suggested translation equivalent” cannot be offered
(1994: 162-169).
6
6
A few examples of highly system-specific concepts posing translation
difficulties must suffice: the common law concept of “equity” which is held
to have no equivalent in civil law (Department of Justice Canada, bijural
terminology records, 2012); the “concept of ‘faute’, which is well known in
French law, has no direct equivalent in other legal systems (in particular,
English and German law)”, Joint Practical Guide for the drafting of
legislation within the Community institutions; usufruit (Kasirer 2001);
“viager” (Février, Linnemer and Visser 2004); trusts, particularly with regard
to Italian law (Lupoi 2013); or tort/delict (Schroth 1986: 57-58). An even
more basic example from company law is the lack of correspondence
between types of legal entity under foreign laws (Rogers-Glabush 2009: 514-
523).
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
52
In establishing a set of postulates on legal translation, De
Groot asserts: “In practical translation, an approximate equivalence of
concepts is sufficient when deciding whether one concept may be used
as translation for another” and: “Whether an approximate equivalence
exists or not depends on the context and goal of the translation” (2009:
229-230, translated by Engberg 2013: 15). De Groot thus renders both
the degree of concepts’ legal equivalence and their use (or not)
contingent on the intended purpose of the translated text.
A number of projects are currently being developed to create
terminological references for the translation of legal concepts across
different legal systems, not all of which, unfortunately, are accessible
to practitioners who work outside institutions. Examples include the
Textual and Terminological Database for the Portuguese Parliament
[BDTT-AR]; TermWise for the Belgian Federal Justice Services
(Heylen et al. 2014); Italian and German projects at the Institute for
Specialised Communication and Multilingualism at the European
Academy of Bolzano (Ralli 2009).
In most countries, there are no legislative guidelines providing
for differences between legal systems or concepts. Some efforts are
being made in this regard, for example as part of the harmonisation
and approximation
7
of European legislation, and at global level by
UNIDROIT (the International Institute for the Unification of Private
Law).
Preserving the integrity of genres and subgenres
Having discussed in the above sections how language and
legal systems need to be taken into account in legal translation
performance, the third aspect of my model concerns genre. Genre is
defined by Swales as a “class of communicative events [sharing a] set
of communicative purposes”, forming the “rationale for the genre”
(1990: 58). That rationale is enforced by the parent discourse
7
Despite the current lack of legal definition, harmonisation may be
summarised as the elimination of disparities between different States’ legal
systems, while approximation might be defined as the “process of modifying
different […] legislations in order to eliminate differences contrasting with
the minimum standard set by a framework decision” (Calderoni 2010).
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
53
community, leading to constraints on “choice of content and style”
(Swales 1990: 58).
Legal genres have been classified by scholars in numerous
ways. Bhatia (1987: 227) outlines a structure differentiating the main
legal genres by their “communicative purposes”, which is highly
pertinent in its implications for translation and the intended user of a
target text. In a more recent work, Bhatia (2006: 6-7) distinguishes
“primary” genres – legislation; “secondary” genres – e.g., judgments
and case reports; “enabling academic genres” – such as textbooks,
critical essays, etc.; and “target genres” – e.g., contracts, affidavits,
insurance documents etc. We may align these categories with the
different environments in which translation is carried out: “primary
genres” within institutions; “enabling academic genres” often by
authors themselves or in close collaboration with their translator; and
“target” and “secondary” genres frequently outsourced. This recalls
Trosborg who divides legal text types according to “external factors
pertaining to the situation of use” (1987: 20). A further classification
refers to the sublanguages of legal professions, which may vary
according to the country involved – examples given include the
“notarial profession” in Europe, “legal authors”, “judges”, and
“counsel” (Mattila 2006: 4-5). This provides a further taxonomical
facet in terms of the drafters of the source text and the intended user(s)
or receiver(s) of the translated text. As an alternative, Mattila suggests
that “legal language can be divided into subgenres on the basis of
branches of law” (2006: 5) – such as criminal law, property law, and
tax law, while Monjean-Decaudin asserts that division of texts in such
a way has proved to be “tedious and of little relevance” (2010a: 4, my
translation).
8
However, it may well be a more accessible approach for
the market.
It is worth pointing out that commissioning clients, whether
from law firms or corporate entities, translation companies/agencies,
and translation practitioners do not generally adopt the above
scholarly classifications (see Biel 2011: 166). The need to embrace
other text typologies has been recognised, for example, by Prieto
Ramos who notes that “subdivisions are ultimately determined by the
lens through which textual realities are observed” (2014: 263).
8
Several other categorisations of legal genres have been proposed by, inter
alios, Cornu (1990) and Bocquet (2008), but given space restrictions and the
aims of this paper I do not explore this point further here.
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
54
Genre provides translators with insights in a number of ways.
The contribution to be made by an awareness of and reference to both
source and target genres/subgenres when translating includes but is
not limited to: appropriate structure and terms; participants and their
relationship(s); and the context of a communication act (e.g., Montalt
Ressurrecció et al. 2008). The following statement by Gotti on the
relevance of genre for discourse analysts applies equally well to legal
translators: “not only to get a better understanding of the linguistic
characteristics of texts, but also of the macrostructure of these texts,
which appears to be organised according to genre expectations and
conventions”, enabling them moreover to learn “how genres are
constructed, interpreted, used and exploited in the achievement of
specific goals in highly specialized contexts” (2012: 61). Furthermore,
textual standardisation is “stronger in legal genres” (Gotti 2012: 60).
In the light of such standardisation, corpus analysis is a
powerful technique to obtain the insights described above. These
methods are truly useful in providing translators with multi-
perspective, fast and reliable access to a given legal genre pool (e.g.,
García Izquierdo and Borja Albi 2008; Biel 2010a). More and more
genre-based studies employ corpus techniques to investigate legal,
business and financial discourse, such as Pontrandolfo (2015) on
criminal judgments; and Gallego Hernndez (2012) on corporate and
financial genres. Some studies also focus on macrostructure, such as
Garrido Rodríguez (2012) on vehicle purchase invoices for imports;
and Garrido Rodríguez (2015) on Memoranda & Articles of
Association. There are several international projects involving legal
corpora, such as Generic Integrity in Legal Discourse in Multilingual
and Multicultural Contexts (GILD) at the University of Bergamo,
Italy, examining arbitration laws from 12 countries; and the GENTT
(Textual Genres for Translation) Research Group at Universitat Jaume
I, Spain.
Distinguishing and addressing purpose
The fourth and final aspect of the legal translator’s textual
agency that I shall review here is the task of taking into account the
purpose of the source text and addressing the purpose of the target
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
55
text. Concerning the suitability of this functionalist approach to legal
translation, Garzone concludes that:
‘the degree of equivalence to be achieved in the translation of a
given text is not absolute, but depends first and foremost on the
TT [target text] intended function as well as on the nature of
the ST [source text]; the whole process is governed by a
principle located at a sufficiently high level of generalisation as
to be suitable for virtually all types of legal texts.’ (2000: 9,
emphasis added).
Despite her use of the word “virtually”, Garzone (2000) does
not specify which types of legal text might be unsuitable. It is
interesting to note in passing that, in addition to a body of translation
scholars, functionalist methods have also been supported by a leading
member of the judiciary – Justice Pigeon of the Supreme Court of
Canada – who has agitated strongly against literal translation with
regard to court documents (Pigeon 1982).
As Munday explains: “knowing why a ST [source text] is to
be translated and what the function of the TT [target text] will be are
crucial for the translator” (2008: 79). Without lessening the
importance of the function of the target text, the latter assertion
includes both source and target texts, as does Garzone’s claim above,
and embraces circumstances whereby translators may either have to
transpose the source text purpose, or produce a target text fulfilling a
different purpose. The target text purpose is also relevant when
assessing performance, as Nida claims when expressing his view on
adequacy:
The relative adequacy of different translations of the same text
can only be determined in terms of the extent to which each
translation successfully fulfils the purpose for which it was intended.
(1976: 64).
This is particularly salient in view of the current adoption of
fitness-for-purpose as a quality benchmark, e.g., by the European
Commission, and the inclusion of the specification by clients of text
purpose in translation standards such as the Deutsches Institut für
Normung (DIN) 2345 and the ASTM (American Society for Testing
and Materials) standard F2575-06 (Scott 2016: 124-126).
The following selection of observations made by Pym reviews
how functionalism can help with performance in practice:
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
56
‘[Functionalism] recognizes that the translator works in a
professional situation, with complex obligations to people as
well as to texts.
It liberates the translator from theories that would try to
formulate linguistic rules governing every decision.
It forces us to see translation as involving many factors, rather
than as work on just one text.’ (2010: 56)
In sum, when negotiating the various aspects of legal
translation performance, which are inextricably linked and
dynamically connected, knowledge of the target text purpose is a
crucial and indispensable prerequisite for success.
Differentiation of receivership and differentiation of status
The end-user of a target text is closely related to its intended
purpose, and needs to be taken into consideration, as asserted by Reiss
& Vermeer: “information about the target-text addressee […] is of
crucial importance for the translator” (1984: 101, cited from the
German by Nord 1997: 22). Despite her 1997 criticisms of
Skopostheorie, and whilst maintaining them, Šarčević entitled her
2000 paper “Legal Translation and Translation Theory, A Receiver-
oriented Approach”, and in that paper unambiguously claims: “[l]ike
other areas of translation, the translation of legal texts is (or ought to
be) receiver oriented” (2000: 1). She broaches the differentiation of
readership and a corresponding variation in translation strategies, and
uses the terms “addressees” and “receivers” synonymously. Citing
Kelsen (1979, in the German), she distinguishes between direct
addressees (specialists) or indirect addressees (including the public).
Gémar has also subdivided readers, into four groups: laymen; those
who are ‘lettered’; practising legal professionals; and legal scholars.
He argues that depending on its destination, a translation will be
constrained and informed by knowledge of its intended readership
(2002: 168). I use the term “end-user” because, given the length of the
Chain of Supply in outsourced contexts for example (Scott 2016: 36-
43), the immediate recipient of the translation may be an intermediary
or a reviser, and not its user – i.e., not the reader or receiver as
understood by Gémar or Šarčević.
The differentiation of translators’ services according to the
target text’s status has been put forward, e.g., by Chesterman and
Wagner (2002), although the latter does not refer specifically to legal
texts. Recently, the translation market has begun to see initiatives by
Comparative Legilinguistics 2017/32
57
translation agencies offering different “service levels” (Scott 2016:
146-148). I have proposed the following tripartite classification as a
first step: translations for gist; translations that are not to be legally
binding; translations where the target text will be legally binding
(2016: 85-86). The triad is resolutely succinct, with the aim of making
it accessible to those commissioning translations, and for the same
reason worded as simply as possible. The proposed classification was
tested in fieldwork relating to the outsourced market, and positively
received (Scott 2016).
In order to further elucidate receivers’ expectations, it is
useful to adopt the distinction between covert and overt translations
first highlighted by House, whereby “an overt translation is one which
must overtly be a translation” (1977: 106) and “a covert translation
[…] enjoys or enjoyed the status of an original ST in the target
culture” [… – a] ST and its covert TT have equivalent purposes”
(1977: 107). I have offered a covert-overt cline for legal translation,
and some proposals for its practical implementation (Scott 2016: 86-
88; Scott forthcoming). For example covert legal translations may
include contracts for signature, banking terms and conditions for
publication, or calls for tender being issued. Overt legal translations,
where literal approaches are favoured and where the ‘transparency’ of
the target text will allow the source to ‘shine’ through a translation,
pertain rather to comparative law exercises (Baaij 2014), access to
foreign legislation, official translations of certificates or diplomas, and
certain judicial genres depending on their destination (Monjean-
Decaudin 2012).
Conclusion
In closing, I would like to underscore the reasoning behind the
multidimensional model offered in this paper. Scholars are
increasingly in agreement that legal translation theory ought to be
induced from professional practice (e.g., Bocquet as early as 1994;
Šarčević 2000; Biel and Engberg 2013; Prieto Ramos 2014). The
model aims to make a contribution to describing effective
performance in the field of legal translation, while taking into account
Toury’s recommendation to balance “the mental [and] the
Juliette SCOTT: Legal Translation – A Multidimensional…
58
environmental, i.e., the situation in and for which the act [of
translation] is performed” (2012: 67).
The paper has emphasised the pivotal nature of each of four
fundamental aspects of the legal translator’s textual agency – where
the word “pivotal” emphasizes their crucial importance in producing
high quality legal translation, and highlights the non-static and non-
linear performance of the translator’s sub-tasks. To reiterate these
building blocks of difficulty:
transferring one legal language to another is a most intricate
affair;
in negotiating solutions between different systems and
cultures with their specific concepts the legal translator enters
the highly sensitive and complex domain of comparative law;
genre and/or sub-genre compliance must also be respected,
subject to rejection of the target text;
the purpose of the translated text – encompassing the text’s
end-user, its status and level of covertness/overtness – is a
crucial aspect that must determine the outcome, and one that
is often used as a quality benchmark for the work produced.
Most importantly, only when we, as legal translation theorists,
trainers, and practitioners, fully appreciate the complexity of the
cognitive juggling and negotiating involved, and then communicate it
to others, will we be able to convey the importance of the legal
translator’s task, raise their status, enhance interaction with clients and
other market actors, and, who knows, attract even brighter stars to the
profession.
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