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34 Am. J. Comp. L. Supp. 47 (1986)
Legal Translation

handle is hein.journals/amcomps34 and id is 55 raw text is: AGENDA I.B.1 Legal Translation Peter W. Schroth* Despite its great practical importance, legal translation is little discussed; despite its difficulty, it is frequently assigned to transla- tors without legal training. Plainly both the importance and the dif- ficulty are commonly underestimated.' The problem of legal translation must first be understood as a particular example of the problem of translation in general (Part I); only then can its special aspects be discerned (Part II). Legal trans- lation will always fall short of the ideal, both for practical and for theoretical reasons, but the practicing lawyer can reduce the impact of the shortfall in several ways (Part III). I. THE PROBLEM OF TRANSLATION A. The Nature of Language The first impression of those who learn something of a foreign language is that they have encountered a sort of code, in which dif- ferent words (and word orders) are used to say exactly what can be said in their own language. Bilingual dictionaries, the first several levels of courses in foreign languages, popular wisdom and the exist- ence of an enormous international literature in translation (at least in the languages used by more developed countries), even some * Deputy General Counsel, Equator Holdings Limited. 1. The discussion in this paper is largely limited to translation of written materials, but including both translations of a foreign text into one's own language and translations into a foreign language for the use of others; the latter, though less discussed, seems much more frequent and is typically of lower quality. A number of my points, however, especially with regard to the inadequacy of translations by those not qualified in both systems, are paralleled (or more precisely, stated more emphat- ically) in NEW JERSEY SUPREME COURT TASK FORCE ON INTERPRETER AND TRANSLA- TION SERVICE, FINAL REPORT: EQUAL ACCESS TO THE COURTS FOR LINGUISTIC MINORITIES (1985) (hereinafter EQUAL ACCESS), which emphasizes oral interpreta- tion. The tone of the latter is set on page viii with Finding #1: Persons providing court interpreting services generally do not possess requisite skills, knowledge and training. In the business world as in the courts, however, that may continue to be a fact of life. Like teaching, translation is not valued highly enough to be paid well enough to attract many of those with well paying alternatives. At the request of the editors, I have provided footnotes that are less extensive than my norm. See generally J. LEVI, LINGUISTICS, LANGUAGE, AND LAW: A TOPI- CAL BIBLIOGRAPHY (1982); EQUAL ACCESS also contains a lengthy bibliography, from quite a different perspective.

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