Intersemiotic Legal Translation

The translation of legal documents in today’s globally interconnected world calls for novel approaches to overcoming traditional language barriers. The verbal language used in legal documents can be accompanied or even replaced by various types of semiotic resource, such as symbols, diagrams, and icons, while the advancement of digital tools and the introduction of new technologies offer those drafting contracts and other legal documents access to an ever-expanding toolbox for the translation process. This book makes a significant contribution to the existing literature on legal translation and intersemiotic translation by sharing valuable insights and opening up new avenues of inquiry, fostering further exploration of this evolving domain and enabling practitioners to use these diverse communication tools responsibly and effectively. Given the book’s structured multidisciplinary approach and extensive analyses of the characteristics of intersemiotic legal translation, its potential, and the complexities that arise at the intersection of law, language, and semiotics, it will appeal to legal practitioners, translators, semiotic scholars, and legal philosophers alike. Whether you are a legal professional aiming to expand your expertise, an academic seeking a new research direction, or are simply intrigued by the fascinating interplay of law, language, and semiotics, this book offers a valuable resource that sheds light on the unique dynamics of translating legal concepts using approaches other than traditional verbal communication. As such, it is an essential read for anyone who is interested in the changing landscape of law, language, and translation.

In this anthology renowned scholars working in the area of legal translation studies (LTS) focus on current issues and challenges in legal translation emerging from today’s globalisation and internationalisation. Considering both theoretical and practical points of view the contributions present interdisciplinary approaches to legal translation dealing with legal systems in national, EU and international settings, and include civil law and common law as well as supranational and private international law. In addition to the historical evolution of legal systems and of legal translation the papers discuss specific features of legal language and challenges in legal translation, as well as new didactic strategies to deal with the future profiles of legal translators.

This long needed reference on the innumerable and increasing ways that the law intersects with translation and interpreting features essays by scholars and professions from the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, and Sweden. The essays range from sophisticated treatments of historical and hence philosophical variations in concept and practice to detailed practical advice on self-education. Essays show a particular concern for the challenges of courtroom discourse when the parties not only use different languages but operate from different cultural and legal traditions.

The field of Legal translation and interpreting has strongly expanded over recent years. As it has developed into an independent branch of Translation Studies, this book advocates for a substantiated discussion of methods and methodology, as well as knowledge about the variety of approaches actually applied in the field. It is argued that, complex and multifaceted as it is, legal translation calls for research that might cross boundaries across research approaches and disciplines in order to shed light on the many facets of this social practice. The volume addresses the challenge of methodological consolidation, triangulation and refinement. The work presents examples of the variety of theoretical approaches which have been developed in the discipline and of the methodological sophistication which is currently being called for. In this regard, by combining different perspectives, they expand our understanding of the roles played by legal translators and interpreters, who emerge as linguistic and intercultural mediators dealing with a rich variety of legal texts; as knowledge communicators and as builders of specialised knowledge; as social agents performing a socially-situated activity; as decision-makers and agents subject to and redefining power relations, and as political actors shaping legal cultures and negotiating cultural identities, as well as their own professional identity. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138492103_oachapter2.pdf

Machine translation (MT) has made huge strides in the last few decades. In the legal field, however, there are only a few academic works dedicated to exploring how MT can be successfully applied in legal translation practice. There is currently a gap in the literature that concerns studies on the automated translation of legal documents drawn up by international law firms and/or tackled by legal translators. This book bridges this gap by providing an in-depth analysis of MT in legal practice. It explores whether, and to what extent, MT can be considered reliable, or at least acceptable, in the legal field and in legal practice. It investigates whether MT target texts can be used as drafts to be processed further (i.e., post-edited), how we might tackle MT’s shortcomings, and how MT tools could be supplemented with other language resources.

This study concentrates on three major issues creating a basis for the making of the "Czech-English Law Dictionary with Explanations", namely language, including terminology, in both the Czech and Anglo-American systems of law; the process of legal translation; and the lexicographic method of producing a bilingual law dictionary. Terminology has been considered the most significant feature of language for legal purposes. It encompasses a wide range of special-purpose vocabulary and higher syntactic units, including legal jargon. Conceptual analysis is to be pursued whenever an identical term in the target language does not exist or its full equivalent is in doubt. Legal translation should be based primarily on comparative legal, linguistic and genre analysis in order to make the transfer of legal information as precise, accurate and comprehensible as possible. The primary objective of legal translation is for the target recipient to be provided as explicit, extensive and precise legal information in the target language as is contained in the source text, complemented (by the translator) with facts rendering the original information fully comprehensible in the different legal environment and culture. A dictionary which will help its users to produce legal texts in the target language should be founded upon a profound comparative legal and linguistic analysis that will (a) determine equivalents at the levels of vocabulary, syntax and genre, (b) select the appropriate lexicographic material to be included in the dictionary, and (c) create entries in a user-friendly manner.

What is 'translation'? Even as the scholarly viewpoint of translation studies has expanded over recent years, the notion of 'translation' has remained fixedly defined by its interlinguistic element. However, there are many different contexts and disciplines in which translation takes place for which this definition is entirely unsuitable. Exploring translational aspects in contexts in which scholars do not think about 'translation', this book considers the alternative uses of the term beyond the interlinguistic dimension. Taking our understanding of 'translation' back to its basic semiotic principles, leading experts outline the wide variety of alternative fields of study, practices, applications and contexts in which the term 'translation' is used. Chapters examine 11 different fields of study, exploring what the term 'translation' means, how it is used and what it could contribute to an enlarged understanding of 'translation' as a concept. In this way, the volume argues for a reimagining of what we mean by translation, providing an essential reference for anyone interested in how translation is understood and practiced beyond the narrow perspectives of the field of translation studies itself.

Weaving together theoretical, historical, and legal approaches, this book offers a fresh perspective on the modern revival of the concept of allegiance, identifying and contextualising its evolving association with theories of citizenship.