Translation of legal language and the problem of equivalence

Abstract

The field of law and its legal language, permanently influence the lives of the members of the society. Legal language is thought to be complex, pompous, laborious, sinuous, archaic, and exaggerative syntax constructions. Due to its complexity, a great number of people do not fully understand important documents (their rights and obligations granted by a constitution), decisions expressed by a court or by a tribunal, the regulations embodied in a statue, or the legal terms specified in a contract. We should take into consideration a very important aspect - the translation of legal language. In this paper, we will deal with the translation of legal texts, which is not simply a matter of linguistic transference, but an attempt to communicate someone else’s message through another language. We will show how the translator has to focus on a complex network of factors, in order to perform an accurate translation, such as the context of situation, the intended use of the translation, the communicative purpose, the generic knowledge, the rhetorical context. Translators must have basic knowledge of the legal cultures and systems of the source and target languages, and they must be aware of the differences of these cultures and even of the absence of equivalent concepts.