Translating Legal Stuff
Legal translation is so wide a domain to satisfy almost any field of human interest, which means anything may be codified. The wider the domain is, the more specialized subjects will be: an example may be found in those law firms who devote themselves exclusively to contracts, from the draft to the fulfilment of particular agreements or to the following of commercial matters regarding Maritime, Pharmaceutical or Aviation laws in many or only few Countries. These Law Firms usually rely on the expertise of internal translators, eventually on that of a legal expert; other lawyers may otherwise contact specialized translation agencies. Generally, civil law firms represent a great opportunity for fledgling translators to acquire valuable experience and come into contact with the heterogeneousness of the legal world: legal translation becomes, though, one of the most challenging as well as tough businesses a translator may ever deal with. “Everyday translation” does, of course, exist; in any case, no surprise if even a day study will not be enough to find the appropriate word to express the right thing in the target language! For sure, a legal translator will hardly get bored, since his research for a single term will inevitably lead him to deepen the knowledge of a whole culture. For this reason, a translator will preferably work into his mother tongue language, but this is often a daydream: any fine translator wants to earn enough to make his stomach stop rumbling, will accept dealing with compromises and will soon learn to translate decently into a second language. Getting paid will be the only proof of quality for a good work.
In my case, the original mother language text would be in Italian, which is notoriously a complex, even convoluted language, mostly in its technical expressions. This gets more evident in the use of the legal jargon, with abundance of proverbs and locutions from Latin and elaborated sentences. This same lexical complexity will hardly be found in legal English: preferring this a more simple syntax, even in the most elevated style or in the variety of legal American (especially in the way contracts are written), where lexicon becomes more technical, sentences are longer than usual and commas almost a forgotten tool! If the first rule of legal English texts is ” be plain and clear”, the first rule of Italian legal documents on the other hand seems to be ” a text may always be enhanced”. This cultural matter troubles translators quite a bit: how to transform a “creative text” (Italian legal documents are often the product of “Inventio”) into a “pre-printed-form like paper” (in UK some legal documents may be filled in directly on-line)? And then how can textual meaning and unequivocal rendering be preserved at the same time? This is why clients are more willing to commit legal translations to an Italian mother tongue speaker, so to eventually clarify cardinal points, if necessary. Sometimes lawyers know quite well the target language and just ask translators’ support for a pure lack of time. In these cases they will be able to verify the exactness of the final result by their own; otherwise the translation would need the revision of an expert.
I never stopped asking my self one more question, since I started translating: can a technical text be really characterized by unambiguousness? Still the answer buzzing in my head is a nagging “no”. Some International Organizations devoted themselves to the standardization of sectorial languages and to the fixing of the equivalence of specific language terms. The European Union is producing, for instance, a quantity of technical glossaries, but their use outside the Unitarian context appears to be inadequate; this goes especially for legal translation, where mediation is not only between two different languages, but mostly between distant juridical systems: common law and civil law. To make this situation more complicated, we must remind that some Countries have many languages but only one Order (for example, Belgium), while others may have parallel Orders (this is the case of USA and each single State or UK with Scotland or EU and Italy itself). This makes standardization still more difficult as a same term changes its meaning if applied to distinct realities such as English or Canadian or American Right Systems, as it is clear that any System is the expression of a specific culture and of a peculiar vision of the world. So the translator’s mission becomes that of finding not simply the equivalent of a technical term in a target language, but that of satisfying a series of criteria in the mind of a hypothetical person who will receive the translation.
When I started translating, I tried to find solace in the only tool I though nearly unequivocal: the legal dictionary by “De Franchis”. All my expectations vanished the moment I found out that any answer to my questions was beginning with an “approximately…” and that the subject needed to be studied more closely. No doubt, the mentioned dictionary is one of the most detailed works about jurisprudence but it is my opinion it is meant more for legal experts than for linguists or translators, since it aims at pointing out differences and the excessively numerous nuances pertaining to so many the Rights of the world. A translator would then approach this kind of dictionary as a handbook to deepen the knowledge of specific legal aspects and, later on, create and improve a personal glossary of difficult terms. Instead, a prompt help can be easily found in the Web. This tool should, by the way, be handled with care because sources are rarely mentioned, which makes any information scarcely reliable. On the contrary, on-line texts of International Conventions and Treaties together with their official translations represent a valid example a translator may take under consideration: the portal of the European Union offers a series of valuable tools such as a wide collection of legislative texts to be consulted and checked out before cited in a translation, or to verify the exactness of a word or the name of any Institution the EU has dealt with. At last, the Eurodicatom database will show the many contents and meanings a single word may be fit for. Still Internet represents the most complete source to find forms, records and contract samples but before choosing any solution, make sure you have verified!
Category: Business Translation
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