Translation and Law
Original version
SYNAPS - A Journal of Professional Communication 28(2013)Abstract
On St. Jerome’s Day 2012, the specific issue of the relationship between translation and law has formed the subject of a lecture at NHH, Bergen. Law is present in many texts, and legal translators will, in their practice, apply a special perspective characterized by a duplicity of views when approaching them.
In the scholarly talk of “translation and the law”, the focus is on two different academic disciplines – Translation Studies and Comparative Law. They do specific research – either on translation theories or on legal systems. And the relationship between both concepts – law and translation – is somewhat unclear at first sight. We might split it up into various questions:
1) What is law, can we translate it?
2) Where is translation in the field of law?
3) What are the special problems of translation here?