Search

Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied in the legal field has gained considerable ground in the recent years and is used in many fields, amongst which the legal one is of no exception. This paper wishes to explore the quality of the translation (from English into Italian) of an arbitration clause performed by the ChatGPT chatbot. To do so, the automatically generated target text is post-edited by consulting the BoLC (Bononia Legal Corpus) and the web as corpus in the gov.it Italian governmental domain. General and legal dictionaries are also used. The paper findings report some inaccuracies at word level which are easily tackled by corpus consultation. In view of the results obtained, however, complete reliance upon AI-driven solutions is not recommendable at the time being. Conversely, the use of ad hoc corpora and of targeted web searches are the most feasible and reliable solutions, although time-consuming.

Ad hoc corpora are considered effective to deliver native-like technical (and legal) translation. This paper explores how the translation of a system-specific document such as an Italian procura alle liti (power of attorney to appear in court) can be addressed. Translating this legal document may be problematic due to the fact that it is not recurrent in the common law system, which contemplates other types of special powers of attorney (PoAs). This paper explores whether and to what extent a corpus-based translation is possible when L2 parallel texts are difficult to find in native contexts. To this aim, a translation project with technical translators and lawyers is carried out. The participants compose an ad hoc corpus which they consult as a language reference tool. The paper findings report that the translators' corpus-based translation is mostly a word-by-word rendering of the source text, which may sound unnatural to an expert of the field. The lawyers' translation partly deviates from source words, but addresses the communicative function of the source text. The paper highlights the need for a balance between the two strategies, for example by focusing on textual functionality and/or paraphrasing, although at the cost of a reduced formulaicity.

Forensic Linguistics as a discipline has gone through more than 30 years of development in China, which can be divided into the brewing period, the establishment and development period, and the comprehensive improvement period. Scholars have presented the origin and development of forensic linguistics in the form of papers, monographs, translations, textbooks, seminars, conferences and other forms, which promotes the future development of forensic linguistics. In the past decade, the study of forensic linguistics has mainly focused on the theoretical research of forensic linguistics, the application of legislative and judicial language, the translation and teaching of legal language. This paper will adopt the method of literature research to summarize the origin and development of Chinese forensic linguistics in the past 30 years, and to anticipate the future development direction of forensic linguistics in the light of the current research characteristics and the hotspot of the times, so as to provide references for the theoretical development and application practice of current forensic linguistics, and to better guide future discipline development in China.

The ‘migration’ of concepts from one language to another, which takes place in cultural exchange, frequently gives rise to changes in the target language, primarily involving the lexical field. The reception of the Romanist legal tradition in China has led to the formation of a specialized lexicon which, along with the translation and production of Roman law-related works, has been subject to constant growth. This kind of terminological transposition has often resulted in the emergence in Chinese of more than one translatant for the same Latin word. As a concrete example of this phenomenon, this paper aims at providing a synoptical overview of the rendering in Chinese of the concepts of dolus and culpa, two legal institutions also largely connected to the field of commercial law. The sources analyzed from a diachronic and contrastive perspective range from the earliest manuals of Roman law published in China at the beginning of the twentieth century to recent documents, translated or directly composed in Chinese. More specifically, this paper will try to answer the following questions: what is the historical evolution of the main terms used in Chinese to express the concepts of dolus and culpa? What are the criteria adopted by Chinese translators/authors in choosing these terms? What are the main features and issues related to the linguistic rendering of the two legal institutions? As for the results of this study, attention will be paid to one of the peculiarities of the linguistic rendering of the concept of culpa, that is the use of two different translatants: guoshi 过失 and guocuo 过错. At the same time, another aspect on which this paper will shed light is the existence of a plethora of translatants related to the concept of dolus (qizha 欺诈, guyi 故意, zhaqi 诈欺, etc.). In this sense, on the one hand, it will be shown how the presence of multiple translatants is acceptable and useful when they are used to express the different shades of meaning conveyed by dolus and culpa that cannot be rendered by means of one single translatant for each of these two notions; on the other hand, this paper will highlight the necessity of a higher homogeneity and standardization of the Chinese Romanist lexicon.

Fixed lexical or syntactical expressions and formulae hallmark legal language. They serve both linguistic and legal purposes, and should be rendered accordingly in a target language and legal system. Most of the times, however, formulaic expressions are translated by resorting to calques, false cognates, or phrases that are uncommon in the target legal language (and legal system). This paper is aimed at exploring how and if corpus analysis can dispel doubts and help find acceptable translation candidates. As there are currently no publicly available legal corpora addressing corporate documents such as contracts and agreements, this paper wishes to bridge this gap by building and relying on an ad hoc corpus of authentic agreements written in English as a first language according to the laws of England and Wales. In this way, corpus evidence can help find equivalents and, possibly, address recurrent mistranslations from Italian into English. During the corpus analysis process, the paper shows and discusses search queries and how equivalents can be obtained. At the same time, it questions dictionary entries. The paper findings highlight that the consultation of the ad hoc corpus allows to find acceptable translations of Italian legal formulae and address recurrent mistranslations. English formulaic expressions, in fact, can be rendered satisfactorily thanks to the possibility of noticing word usages in context, keywords in contexts and collocations. Further research can encompass a wider variety of formulae and/or legal documents so that scholars and translators can be equipped with useful reference tools.

The paper focuses on time marks that may be detected in common law agreements and the translation issues they imply. In the first section, the author discusses the relation between time and law. The legal time governs the social time, as it ensures order and security. If memory is the manifestation of the legal past, the promise is the expression of the legal future. Depending on the legal culture taken into account, the legislator’s time may be more or less important than the time of the judge. The second section of the paper deals with time avatars that may be identified at the macrotextual level. The contract is understood as a promise that becomes obligation. The legal time is also expressed in contracts by the predictive capability of the parties, its acceleration and backwardness, its finiteness. The last section is an analysis of the translation of terms, collocations and metaphors expressing time in common law contracts.

Several are the European Directives dedicated to e-commerce, focussing on consumer rights, the distance marketing of consumer financial services and the protection of consumers indistance contracts.In contract law, the terms “termination”, “withdrawal”and “cancellation”have peculiar and distinct meaning. Nonetheless, they tend to be misused and applied interchangeably. This article will shed light on these relevant terms in thelight of EU Directives on the protection of consumer rights in off-premises and distance contracts.To do so, it will first present instances in which the meaningand use of these terms is either clear-cut or somehow blurred. By analysing word usage and meaning in context, it will explore how EU Directives, and EU drafters in general, made(un)ambiguous distinctions. Then, it will investigate whether English-speaking drafters (such as those of the pre-Brexit UK, Ireland and Malta) made a consistent use ofsuch terms. Finally, this paper will explore whether online conditions of sale writtenin English by non-English speaking sellers or traders (such as Italian and Polish) also make a consistent use of the terms.The paper findings highlight that the use andlegal purpose of these terms in European Directives have not been particularly consistent over the years. Furthermore, Member States’system-specificity has weighed on the meaning, application and scope of the terms. On the other hand, at EU level the absence of a unique legal system of reference and the challenges of harmonization may have created false equivalences.

This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports which is divided into two narrative types, the objective and the semi-dialogic. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts in the two types, it finds that the differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor’s students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.

This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts, this paper finds the following points: English and Chinese legal news generally have two narrative types: objective narrative and semi-dialogic narrative. The differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.

Several are the European Directives dedicated to e-commerce, focussing on consumer rights, the distance marketing of consumer financial services and the protection of consumers in distance contracts. In contract law, the terms “termination”, “withdrawal” and “cancellation” have peculiar and distinct meaning. Nonetheless, they tend to be misused and applied interchangeably. This article will shed light on these relevant terms in the light of EU Directives on the protection of consumer rights in off-premises and distance contracts. To do so, it will first present instances in which the meaning and use of these terms is either clear-cut or somehow blurred. By analysing word usage and meaning in context, it will explore how EU Directives, and EU drafters in general, made (un)ambiguous distinctions. Then, it will investigate whether English-speaking drafters (such as those of the pre-Brexit UK, Ireland and Malta) made a consistent use of such terms. Finally, this paper will explore whether online conditions of sale written in English by non-English speaking sellers or traders (such as Italian and Polish) also make a consistent use of the terms. The paper findings highlight that the use and legal purpose of these terms in European Directives have not been particularly consistent over the years. Furthermore, Member States’ system-specificity has weighed on the meaning, application and scope of the terms. On the other hand, at EU level the absence of a unique legal system of reference and the challenges of harmonization may have created false equivalences.

This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts, this paper finds the following points: English and Chinese legal news generally have two narrative types: objective narrative and semi-dialogic narrative. The differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.

Several are the European Directives dedicated to e-commerce, focussing on consumer rights, the distance marketing of consumer financial services and the protection of consumers in distance contracts. In contract law, the terms “termination”, “withdrawal” and “cancellation” have peculiar and distinct meaning. Nonetheless, they tend to be misused and applied interchangeably. This article will shed light on these relevant terms in the light of EU Directives on the protection of consumer rights in off-premises and distance contracts. To do so, it will first present instances in which the meaning and use of these terms is either clear-cut or somehow blurred. By analysing word usage and meaning in context, it will explore how EU Directives, and EU drafters in general, made (un)ambiguous distinctions. Then, it will investigate whether English-speaking drafters (such as those of the pre-Brexit UK, Ireland and Malta) made a consistent use of such terms. Finally, this paper will explore whether online conditions of sale written in English by non-English speaking sellers or traders (such as Italian and Polish) also make a consistent use of the terms. The paper findings highlight that the use and legal purpose of these terms in European Directives have not been particularly consistent over the years. Furthermore, Member States’ system-specificity has weighed on the meaning, application and scope of the terms. On the other hand, at EU level the absence of a unique legal system of reference and the challenges of harmonization may have created false equivalences.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor's students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor's students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor's students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

Corpora-based analysis has become one of the major methodologies used in linguistics. However, it has not been widely applied in legalese studies. The paper makes an attempt to discuss the usefulness of the specialized combined parallel-comparable corpus while dealing with the legal language. The effectiveness is presented on the example of the Treuhand and the Treuhänderschaft. The research is based on the comparative analysis as well as the corpus-based analysis of the terms related to the Treuhand and the Treuhänderschaft presented in two varieties of German: Standard German spoken in Germany and Liechtenstein’s German. The corpus-based analysis reveals the juridical-semantic differences and the problematics of the verbal realization of the concepts. These hinder a proper interpretation and complicate the process of translation. The major solution is found through the specification of meaning by renaming. This solution may acquire the greatest importance in today’s world, because the process of globalization widens the area of utilization of the Treuhand and the Treuhänderschaft and any obscurity or incomprehensibility can cause problems during cross-national linguistic and juridical activities.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

This paper will explore how consulting the BoLC (Bononia Legal Corpus; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini and Martelli 2007) can be helpful and advantageous when tackling legal translations. To this aim, a 4-hour trial lesson with experienced translators was organized. Before the workshop, the participants translated a 300-word legal document issued within a civil case. Their translations (from English to Italian) were revised during the trial lesson, where the attendants learned how to consult the BoLC. They also used supplementary online resources, such as dictionaries and/or experts' blogs or fora. The paper findings will remark that despite some drawbacks, such as the absence of POS tagging and lemmatization, and a quite complex search syntax, the BoLC helps dispel doubts and deliver outstanding translation work. Its main usefulness lies in the possibility to find formulaic expressions and collocational use, which can be rather intricate in legal discourse.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.

This paper will explore how consulting the BoLC (Bononia Legal Corpus; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini and Martelli 2007) can be helpful and advantageous when tackling legal translations. To this aim, a 4-hour trial lesson with experienced translators was organized. Before the workshop, the participants translated a 300-word legal document issued within a civil case. Their translations (from English to Italian) were revised during the trial lesson, where the attendants learned how to consult the BoLC. They also used supplementary online resources, such as dictionaries and/or experts' blogs or fora. The paper findings will remark that despite some drawbacks, such as the absence of POS tagging and lemmatization, and a quite complex search syntax, the BoLC helps dispel doubts and deliver outstanding translation work. Its main usefulness lies in the possibility to find formulaic expressions and collocational use, which can be rather intricate in legal discourse.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

This paper will explore how consulting the BoLC (Bononia Legal Corpus; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini and Martelli 2007) can be helpful and advantageous when tackling legal translations. To this aim, a 4-hour trial lesson with experienced translators was organized. Before the workshop, the participants translated a 300-word legal document issued within a civil case. Their translations (from English to Italian) were revised during the trial lesson, where the attendants learned how to consult the BoLC. They also used supplementary online resources, such as dictionaries and/or experts' blogs or fora. The paper findings will remark that despite some drawbacks, such as the absence of POS tagging and lemmatization, and a quite complex search syntax, the BoLC helps dispel doubts and deliver outstanding translation work. Its main usefulness lies in the possibility to find formulaic expressions and collocational use, which can be rather intricate in legal discourse.

Legal language is hallmarked by a pedantic and user-unfriendly jargon whose constructs are all but intuitive, not to mention the legal system specificity which makes it unique in every country. Second language (L2) learners or scholars, hence, may find it difficult to understand the language of the law; whereas translators may consider legal lexical phrases and patterns rather intricate to deal with. The literature claims that a practical way to deepen language knowledge can be found in the Web considered as corpus and in online corpora. This paper is aimed at exploring whether commercial search engines, Web concordancers and online specialised corpora can tackle the issues revolving around legal language. In particular, it will investigate whether Google advanced search and the Leeds Web concordancer can be used to meet the requirements of legal language learners, scholars and translators. Furthermore, it will address legal language queries (and results) in an online specialised corpus: the COCA. This paper will provide instances of the soundness of the above-mentioned online resources, especially when used jointly as cross-analysis tools. The shortcomings of one can, in fact, be compensated for by the other(s).

Legal language is hallmarked by a pedantic and user-unfriendly jargon whose constructs are all but intuitive, not to mention the legal system specificity which makes it unique in every country. Second language (L2) learners or scholars, hence, may find it difficult to understand the language of the law; whereas translators may consider legal lexical phrases and patterns rather intricate to deal with. The literature claims that a practical way to deepen language knowledge can be found in the Web considered as corpus and in online corpora. This paper is aimed at exploring whether commercial search engines, Web concordancers and online specialised corpora can tackle the issues revolving around legal language. In particular, it will investigate whether Google advanced search and the Leeds Web concordancer can be used to meet the requirements of legal language learners, scholars and translators. Furthermore, it will address legal language queries (and results) in an online specialised corpus: the COCA. This paper will provide instances of the soundness of the above-mentioned online resources, especially when used jointly as cross-analysis tools. The shortcomings of one can, in fact, be compensated for by the other(s).

Legal language is hallmarked by a pedantic and user-unfriendly jargon whose constructs are all but intuitive, not to mention the legal system specificity which makes it unique in every country. Second language (L2) learners or scholars, hence, may find it difficult to understand the language of the law; whereas translators may consider legal lexical phrases and patterns rather intricate to deal with. The literature claims that a practical way to deepen language knowledge can be found in the Web considered as corpus and in online corpora. This paper is aimed at exploring whether commercial search engines, Web concordancers and online specialised corpora can tackle the issues revolving around legal language. In particular, it will investigate whether Google advanced search and the Leeds Web concordancer can be used to meet the requirements of legal language learners, scholars and translators. Furthermore, it will address legal language queries (and results) in an online specialised corpus: the COCA. This paper will provide instances of the soundness of the above-mentioned online resources, especially when used jointly as cross-analysis tools. The shortcomings of one can, in fact, be compensated for by the other(s).

Legal language is hallmarked by a pedantic and user-unfriendly jargon whose constructs are all but intuitive, not to mention the legal system specificity which makes it unique in every country. Second language (L2) learners or scholars, hence, may find it difficult to understand the language of the law; whereas translators may consider legal lexical phrases and patterns rather intricate to deal with. The literature claims that a practical way to deepen language knowledge can be found in the Web considered as corpus and in online corpora. This paper is aimed at exploring whether commercial search engines, Web concordancers and online specialised corpora can tackle the issues revolving around legal language. In particular, it will investigate whether Google advanced search and the Leeds Web concordancer can be used to meet the requirements of legal language learners, scholars and translators. Furthermore, it will address legal language queries (and results) in an online specialised corpus: the COCA. This paper will provide instances of the soundness of the above-mentioned online resources, especially when used jointly as cross-analysis tools. The shortcomings of one can, in fact, be compensated for by the other(s).

A human right to the environment is increasingly recognised in both domestic and international law. Also in Polish legal scholarship, there is a discussion over the possibility of deriving a right to the environment from the Constitution or ordinary statutes, including Article 4(1) of the Environmental Protection Law Act. The existing English translations of its opening words, and specifically the term powszechne korzystanie ze środowiska, appear to mirror the legal controversy. Compared to Poland, the major common law jurisdictions, i.e. England and the USA, show multiple differences in respect of the public’s enjoyment of the environment. In addition to a distinct legal mentalité, grounded on a case-by-case approach, negative freedoms and remedies thinking, both jurisdictions are characterised by considerable private ownership of natural resources like rivers and forests. In view of this legal and translation problem, the present paper seeks to employ comparative law methodology to establish an acceptable English translation equivalent of the term powszechne korzystanie ze środowiska. The analysis is also an attempt to go beyond the ways in which the use of comparative law in legal translation is typically perceived, i.e., beyond functionalism, beyond micorcomparison and beyond conceptual analysis.

The Czech Civil Code has recently introduced differentiation between two terms denoting a period of time: lhůta and doba. Both of these terms are used, often interchangeably, in ordinary Czech language and are thus susceptible to failure by translators to be recognized as terms. It is believed that the definitions provided by the draftsmen of the said code do not describe the difference in meaning sufficiently for non-lawyers to understand (cf. Goźdź-Roszkowski, 2013: 100). Therefore, this paper aims at describing the difference in meaning of these terms on the basis of a qualitative analysis of their collocational patterns and collocational profile, as used in the wording of the said law. The second part of the paper consists of an analysis of potential English equivalents (time limit, period, deadline, time) and their collocates as used in legislation drafted in English. The analysis is based on a corpus compiled of the Czech Civil Code and a comparable corpus of civil legislation drafted in English. The findings of the analysis will outline the strategies available to translators dealing with temporal expressions at the Czech-English interface.

The paper addresses the existing models of translation competence that are relevant for didactics of legal translation. Translation competence is generally perceived as a theoretical construct embracing such areas as knowledge, skills and aptitudes that are vital for the performance of translation tasks. The paper shall start from concise presentation of most didactically relevant – in the author’s view – approaches to translation competence. This shall be followed by attempts aimed at the incorporation and integration of findings of competence research presented as well as practical solutions into the teaching and learning process with a view to legal translation competence.

This paper aims to explore the traces of ideology in court decisions from the Communism period in Albania. A court judgment on a certain case, except from playing a role in setting the punishment, it also reinforces the ideological stance of dictatorship. As recent studies of Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis highlight, ideology is linguistically mediated. The CDA methodological tools are used to analyze the linguistic categories that are marked by ideological traces. The paper also examines conceptual metaphors and the metaphoric scenarios employed in the above legal discourse fragments, which help communism construct its own legal and political reality. All the findings of this research prove that ideology outreaches the political realities, and it may also affect the legal discourse, especially during the lead of a communist dictatorship.

During the 23rd March - 4th April 2007 crisis over the detention of British military personnel by the Iranian authorities, press interest in the UK centred 1) on the “truth” of the Iranian assertion that the British boats had illegally entered Iranian waters and 2) on the authenticity of the statements the captives made on Iranian television and in the letters written by one of them: Faye Turney, the only woman in the group. It is the purpose of this paper, admittedly after the event, to introduce some linguistic input into the debate on the authenticity of the texts by searching in the letters themselves for evidence of idiosyncratic usages which appear to be non-native and, from those, infer the existence of a covert author, distinct from the overt writer. This paper is, therefore, a short forensic linguistic case study which demonstrates the hypothesis that the texts are corrupt, with a non-native, covert author - almost certainly a Farsi speaker – fraudulently claiming to be both the writer and the originator of the letters.

This paper will explore the implications in relation to the possibility of making law students comprehend foreign legal terminology. The starting point of our analysis, our hypothesis, will be that the law student is not necessarily equipped with foreign language skills. For this reason the author will attempt to demonstrate that comparative lawyers must familiarise their unfamiliarised (students of law) with familiar domestic[1] terminology where this is possible. If no such familiar concepts can be found, the comparative lawyer should attempt to proceed with ‘translating’ foreign legal concepts by the use of ‘close (functional) terminological equivalents’ in one’s domestic legal language (school of functionalism). If, on the other hand, no parallel legal devices for the foreign legal term are found in one’s domestic jurisdiction, the comparative lawyer should proceed by deploying a contextual approach in his analysis/teaching (school of contextualism). Above all, one is reminded that words are mere conventions. So too legal terms are mere conventions. As a result, it would be neglectful to not state that our students must be assisted in identifying the semainon (σημαίνον) and the semainomenon (σημαινόμενον), that is assisted in identifying the signified and the signifier, when they engage themselves with foreign legal terminology in their comparative law studies. Additionally, as Van Hoecke has argued, apparently disconnected notions, concepts or areas of law may well be relevant to each other (Van Hoecke 2004, 175). Yet, it would be perfectly ‘legitimate’ on certain occasions for one to compare prima facie connected terms such as ‘Interprétation – Interpretation or Construction – Auslegung’ respectively in French, English and German, since these terms are a perfectly valid comparative trio (all words basically refer to the same intellectual activity) (Platsas 2008, 6; quoting Van Hoecke, op. cit., n. 3). All in all, the paper will conclude that the comparative lawyer should be constantly reminded of the difficulties that his/her students might have when dealing with foreign legal terminology, because of one has it that even experienced comparative lawyers can face problems of comprehension when dealing with foreign legal terminology. [1] Cf. Zweigert and Kötz 1998, 35; according to them the comparatist can only reach ideal results, if he ‘eradicates the preconceptions of his native legal system.’

The paper focuses on the concept of reasonableness in several countries, in particular, comparing common and civil law systems. More specifically, it refers to the use of this word in the discourse of the judiciary and especially in the context of constitutional law. In the latter context reasonableness plays a crucial role in conveying values and thus construing “different” constitutionalisms; in fact it enhances the dynamics of the constitutional framework, while leaving the Constitution unaltered. Up to now, constitutional scholarship has devoted attention to the issue of reasonableness as a tool of adjudication (i.e. by including it in the wider framework of scrutiny techniques, such as strict scrutiny versus proportionality). On the contrary, the underlying hypothesis of this paper is that a solid linguistic approach will enhance the understanding of the role reasonableness plays as the quest for minima moralia in constitutional law.

This paper challenges the modern legal concept of “person” by analyzing the translation problems of some Roman law fragments. It shows why the Latin word “persona” cannot be the etymon of the vernacular “person,” and argues that the modern use of “person” stems from the nineteenth-century German juridical literature, especially that of F. C. von Savigny. This paper shows that “persona” forms a phrase with verbs like gerere, tenere and sustinere (bear, carry, hold, etc.) and has no meaning by itself. Such phrases require a noun complement in genitive form, as their synonym “represent,” which is transitive, needs a direct object. On the other hand, the modern literature attributes a sense to “person,” taking it as equivalent to “human individual” and using it word with the verb “be.” This use is a modern invention and cannot be re-translated into Latin without semantic confusion.

The paper is dedicated to highlighting and indicating linguistic exponents used for needs to express the recipients of legal rules, which are present in Polish, Greek and Cypriot normative acts. The thesis of the investigation is the suspicion of designation or denotation or different relations existing between linguistic exponents referring to the recipients of legal rules and the real recipients of legal rules. Before the empirical investigations are conducted, some characteristics of legal language (statutory language) are given. The statutory language is understood as the language used express and to formulate legal rules. Thus, language of legal rules is an abstract creation as it is the interpreted form of the statutory language. Then a typical legal rule might be seen as an utterance saying: “X (in the circumstances Y) does Z”. The statutory language has a specific character and function, which is to express and to verbalize legal rules, thus considering the typology of legal rules, which is division into general legal rules (lex generalis) and specific legal rules (lex specialis), the linguistic exponents of these rules are presented. They are derived from Polish, Greek and Cypriot normative acts, more specifically, they form the laws. The next step of the investigation is to present the linguistic exponents used to specify the recipients of legal rules. The presentation is based on the relations of designation or denotation or different and the analysed linguistic exponents are given in confrontational aspect. The summaries and conclusions of the whole investigation are discussed in the final remarks of the paper. The final step of the investigation is to propose where and how the results of the performed investigations might be used as the applied linguistic, legal translatology especially seems the appropriate applicable field.

The rule of law, guaranteed in democratic countries, requires that those who are subject to the law should be able to know the law (the principle of legal certainty). Hence, a citizen should have an access to laws in a language that he or she knows. Therefore, in multilingual settings, the principle of legal multilingualism requires that legal acts be drafted in all official languages and provides that all language versions be equally authentic and contribute to the meaning of a legal act. Thus, citizens can read laws in a language they understand. On the other hand, since no two languages are identical, the discrepancies between language versions, due to the nature of language or a mistake, are inevitable. The paper identifies methods applied by judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union and national courts to deal with the discrepancies between language versions of EU legal acts. Through case law analysis, the paper demonstrates whether the principle of legal multilingualism actually guarantees legal certainty and what courts can do to make the right to remain unilingual in a multilingual setting real.

This paper aims to answer the question whether modern legal drafting is implementing the revolutionary changes argued for by the plain language movement and whether legal texts are made more user-friendly, particularly to their non-professional recipients. The paper discusses the main characteristics of modern legal drafting against the background of research conducted in 2011 and 2012 based on a broad selection of American consumer contracts. The interest centres on the successes rate of the plain language campaigners as well as the threats to their pursuit of plain legal drafting.