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What's So Special About Legal Translation? Document généré le 2 oct. 2021 08:26 Meta Journal des traducteurs Translators' Journal What’s so Special about Legal Translation? Malcolm Harvey Traduction et terminologie juridiques Résumé de l'article Volume 47, numéro 2, juin 2002 Cette étude vise à passer en revue les principales difficultés de la traduction juridique, en se demandant si elles en font, comme d’aucuns le prétendent, une URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/008007ar catégorie à part. Elle propose une définition relativement large de la traduction DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/008007ar juridique, ce qui conduit à nuancer ses prétendues spécificités. Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal ISSN 0026-0452 (imprimé) 1492-1421 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Harvey, M. (2002). What’s so Special about Legal Translation? Meta, 47(2), 177–185. https://doi.org/10.7202/008007ar Tous droits réservés © Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2002 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ What’s so Special about Legal Translation? malcolm harvey Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France RÉSUMÉ Cette étude vise à passer en revue les principales difficultés de la traduction juridique, en se demandant si elles en font, comme d’aucuns le prétendent, une catégorie à part. Elle propose une définition relativement large de la traduction juridique, ce qui conduit à nuancer ses prétendues spécificités. ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the main difficulties of legal translation and discuss whether they justify claims that it is a category in its own right. It proposes a wide-ranging definition of legal translation, which calls into question some received notions about its inherent difficulties. MOTS-CLÉS/KEYWORDS ambiguity, difficulties of legal translation, fidelity in translation, legal documents Bold claims have been made about legal translation. It has been described as a cat- egory in its own right (Weston 1991: 2, Gémar 1995b: 143-154, Garzone 2000: 395) and as “the ultimate linguistic challenge,” combining the inventiveness of literary translation with the terminological precision of technical translation (Cairns & McKeon 1995: 191, cf. Gémar 1995a: 9, Pelage 2000: 127). Claims to special status for legal translation are based on at least two debatable assumptions. The first is the notion that a sliding scale of difficulty can be estab- lished between different translation genres. Depending on the experience of the translator and the nature of the task in hand, each new assignment involves a combi- nation of old routines and new challenges. It might be added that categories such as “scientific translation” and “literary translation” are not watertight. Literary texts, in common with other text types, are a hybrid form: for instance, knowledge of the law would not come amiss when translating the novels of P. D. James or John Grisham. The second unsafe premise is a somewhat idealistic view of the epistemology of scientific subjects, often thought by non-scientists to be unproblematic. As Joseph remarks, “it is not unusual for specialists in a particular discipline to believe that other disciplines are better founded, less subject to skeptical doubts and speculative changes than their own” (1995: 15, cf. Gémar 1995a: 119). It could be added, with just a dash of cynicism, that ambitious claims for a par- ticular activity may be underpinned by socio-professional considerations: if legal translation requires more time and/or skill than other types of assignment, then it follows that legal translators should be paid more. Meta, XLVII, 2, 2002 02.Meta.47/2.Partie 1 177 24/05/02, 10:06 178 Meta, XLVII, 2, 2002 1. When is a document a legal document? General statements about legal translation are necessarily determined by the writer’s definition of a legal document. Sarcevic (1997: 9) defines legal language as special- purpose communication between specialists, thereby excluding communication between lawyers and non-lawyers. This restriction disqualifies several text types which make up a large part of the translator’s workload: contracts, judgements, cor- respondence with lawyers and legal authorities, etc. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of legal discourse is arguably that it is not restricted to specialists, but is (at least in theory) intended for the lay citizen.1 In some cases the lawyer acts as an intermediary or surrogate addressee,2 “translating” the word of the law into everyday language (cf. Cornu 1990: 23); in others the layperson becomes a substitute lawyer (e.g. as juror or lay justice) and makes utterances having legal effects (wills, the verdict of “Guilty/not guilty” or the words “I do” during a wedding ceremony). This complex communicative situation, which is almost unique in special-purpose communication,3 may explain why the language of law, along with medicine, has been lampooned over the centuries by authors ranging from Molière to Swift and, more recently, the Plain English campaign. Such demands are rarely placed on other subject areas: people rarely complain that they cannot understand the language of nuclear physicists or biochemists. The ambitious adage “Ignorance of the law is no excuse/Nul n’est censé ignorer la loi” has no equivalent in most special-purpose lan- guages, which are generally restricted to communication among specialists (Sarcevic 1997: 55, Sager 1980: 68-9).4 A narrow definition of legal language also leads scholars to identify supposed characteristics which are open to question. For instance, it is stated that author- lessness is a feature of legal language (Sourioux & Lerat 1975: 44-46), in particular statutes (Cornu 1990: 279-82), and that this has consequences for the status of the legal translator (Joseph 1995: 19-21). However, there are cases of documents dealing with the law, or even stating the law, in which the first-person singular is prominent: for instance, wills, notary’s documents in French, and the judicial opinions of the House of Lords (Harvey 1997: 269-274). Similarly, Sarcevic (1997) focusses on parallel texts of statutory instruments, treaties and judicial opinions. The claim that “unlike other areas of special-purpose translation, the main goal of legal translators cannot be to produce a text with the same meaning as the message of the source text” (Sarcevic 1997: 70) is valid for parallel texts, which are intended to produce equal legal effects, but is difficult to apply to more everyday tasks such as translating police documents for refugees or witness statements by foreign-language speakers. A more inclusive definition of what constitutes a legal text would cover documents which are, or may become, part of the judicial process: for instance, contracts, wills, court documents, witness statements and expert reports, which are “bread and but- ter” activities for lawyers and legal translators.5 This definition includes not just the word of the law but also the word of the participant in the legal process;6 by embrac- ing both authoritative and non-authoritative statements, it may shed a different light on the supposed special status of legal translation. In particular, the fact that schol- arly work on legal translation tends to focus on the translation of statutes, reflecting the “legicentrism” of legal scholarship in general (Kasirer 2000: 65), partly accounts 02.Meta.47/2.Partie 1 178 24/05/02, 10:06 what’s so special about legal translation ? 179 for the traditional reverence for the source text (see section 2.3), which is not neces- sarily appropriate when translating other forms of legal discourse. 2. Characteristics of legal translation 2.1 The nature of legal discourse Several authors claim that the special status of legal translation derives from the prescriptive nature of legal discourse, which gives rise to legal effects (Koutsivitis 1988: 44-50, Gémar 1995b: 144-5). Sarcevic (1997: 11) divides legal documents into prescriptive and descriptive texts, plus hybrid texts which contain both functions (e.g. judicial decisions, appeals, petitions). Texts with a primarily expressive function are excluded from this definition. Several questions arise from this. First, it is something of a tautology to say that legal translation is unlike other forms of translation because the target text has legal effects: by their very nature, non-legal texts cannot have legal effects. If this definition is extended to saying that the target text must have effects in the special subject area, then this is true of all special-purpose texts: texts on astrophysics must have effects for astrophysicists, etc. Secondly, in focussing on prescriptive documents, there is a risk of overlooking the expressive or persuasive function which inevitably occurs in a form of discourse founded on rhetoric. True, this function arises mainly in communication between lawyer and layperson (e.g. counsel addressing a jury), which some theorists would not define as legal discourse. However, there are also examples of persuasive commu- nication between lawyers, e.g. the explanatory parts of a judicial decision, or a schol- arly article explaining why a change is needed (or was misguided).7 In such cases, the aim is not to prescribe or describe but to convince, a common function in profes- sional communication (Gile 1995: 25-26). Finally, the prescriptive function is not absent from other special-subject areas: the advice contained in an instructions manual is prescriptive once readers have “entered the pact,” symbolised by breaking the seal, if they want the instrument to perform its intended task.
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