Legal Machine Translation Explained

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.

Focusing on the problems of translating English legal language, Alcaraz and Hughes offer a wide-ranging view of one of the most demanding and vital areas of contemporary translation practice. Individual chapters deal with legal English as a linguistic system, special concepts in the translation of legal English, the genres of legal translation, and offer a series of practical problems together with discussions of proposed solutions, as well as insight into the pragmatic ways translators go about finding solutions. The numerous examples and discussions of specific terms make the book useful both as a manual in the translation class and as an invaluable reference work for students, teachers, self-learners and professional translators.

This book describes interdisciplinary exploration of matters related to the translation and interpreting of legal texts. Translation of legal texts has grown exponentially since the beginning of new millennium in response to the fast-increasing volume of international trade and business as well as all sorts of other transnational activities in a myriad of spheres. International trade demands translation of trade laws and business contracts, immigration leads to rise in court interpreting services, and countries may seek to enhance their international influence through translating and making known to the world their laws and/or other legal documents. These legal translation activities occurred mostly between languages officially used in international or regional organizations, such as the United Nations and the European Union, and between the languages of major countries who exert or seek influence on international economy and law. On the other hand, rapid advances in computer technology and artificial intelligence in recent years have also brought about changes in the practices of legal translation. With changes also come problems in both theory and practice that merit our immediate attention. This edited volume highlights the newest developments in the theory, practice, and training of legal translation, with contributions from international leading researchers in this area. It will be a standard reference for anyone who is to embark on research and practice of legal translation in the twenty-first century. It is also adaptable as teaching materials for translation and interpreting training.

This book is a contribution to the research community towards thinking and reflecting on what Responsible Machine Translation really means. It was conceived as an open dialogue across disciplines, from philosophy to law, with the ultimate goal of providing a wide spectrum of topics to reflect on. It covers aspects related to the development of Machine translation systems, as well as its use in different scenarios, and the societal impact that it may have. This text appeals to students and researchers in linguistics, translation, natural language processing, philosophy, and law as well as professionals working in these fields.

As a result of globalization, cross-border transactions and litigation, and multilingual legislation, outsourcing legal translation has become common practice. Unfortunately, over-reliance on such outsourcing has given rise to significant dangers, including information asymmetry, goal divergence, and risk. Legal Translation Outsourced provides the only current reference on commercial legal translation performed outside institutions. Juliette Scott casts a critical eye on the practice as it now stands, offering an analysis of key risks and constraints. Her work is informed by empirical data of the legal translation outsourcing markets of 41 countries. Scott proposes original theoretical models aimed both at training legal translators and informing all stakeholders, including principals and agents. These include models of legal translation performance; a classification of constraints on legal translation applying upstream, during and downstream of translation work; and a description of the complex chain of supply. Working to improve the enterprise itself, Scott shows how implementing a comprehensive legal translation brief--a sorely needed template--can significantly benefit clients by increasing the fitness of translated texts. Further, she opens a number of avenues for future research with an eye to translator empowerment and professionalization.

This volume presents a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of major developments in the study of how phraseology is used in a wide range of different legal and institutional contexts. This recent interest has been mainly sparked by the development of corpus linguistics research, which has both demonstrated the centrality of phraseological patterns in language and provided researchers with new and powerful analytical tools. However, there have been relatively few empirical studies of word combinations in the domain of law and in the many different contexts where legal discourse is used. This book seeks to address this gap by presenting some of the latest developments in the study of this linguistic phenomenon from corpus-based and interdisciplinary perspectives. The volume draws on current research in legal phraseology from a variety of perspectives: translation, comparative/contrastive studies, terminology, lexicography, discourse analysis and forensic linguistics. It contains contributions from leading experts in the field, focusing on a wide range of issues amply illustrated through in-depth corpus-informed analyses and case studies. Most contributions to this book are multilingual, featuring different legal systems and legal languages. The volume will be a valuable resource for linguists interested in phraseology as well as lawyers and legal scholars, translators, lexicographers, terminologists and students who wish to pursue research in the area.

Indirect Translation Explained is the first comprehensive, user-friendly book on the practice of translating indirectly in today’s world. Unlike previous scholarly approaches, which have traditionally focused on translating from the original, this textbook offers practical advice on how to efficiently translate from an already translated text and for the specific purpose of further translation. Written by key specialists in this area of research and drawing on many years of translation teaching and practice, this process-focused textbook covers a range of languages, geographical settings and types of translation, including audiovisual, literary, news, and scientific-technical translation, as well as localization and interpreting. Since this topic addresses the concerns and practices of both more peripheral and more dominant languages, this textbook is usable by all, regardless of the language combinations they work with. Featuring theoretical considerations, tasks for hands-on practice, suggestions for further discussion and diverse, real-world examples, this is the essential textbook for all students and autodidacts learning how to translate via a third language. Additional resources are available on the Routledge Translation Studies Portal: http://routledgetranslationstudiesportal.com

This book is the first attempt to establish a collaborative and interdisciplinary field of economics and legal studies. It is designed to help readers – advanced undergraduate and graduate students, but also fellow scholars who are interested in interdisciplinarity – to think through the dual lenses of economics and law. “Econo-Legal Studies,” as we call it, is an economics that pays greater attention to the perspective and heritage of legal studies, and at the same time legal studies that fully utilize the views and methods of economics – while “law and economics” is just a one-way economic approach to law focusing on the effects of the latter on efficiency. The aim of this book is to encourage readers to think like economists and, at the same time, legal scholars as they analyze complex real-world issues. It presents stimulating discussions on the intersection of law and economics, the differences and unexpected similarities between the two perspectives, and the new insights to be gained when approaching a problem from both angles. For this purpose, the extensive corpus of knowledge produced within the framework of the Econo-Legal Studies interdisciplinary program at Kobe University can be capitalized on. Basic knowledge of both economics and law is also included in this volume, making it an engaging read for beginners in both fields as well.