Legal translation: bridging cultural gaps

29 May 2008 - Dan Maskell

As emphasised in previous articles, translation entails far more than the mere replacement of words in one language with those in another, but legal translators could be said to have an even more arduous task given the system-dependent nature of the terminology used and the social, cultural and historical concepts that lie behind that usage.
In contrast with other branches of technical translation, legal translators have to habitually grapple with the fact that each and every country in the world has its own body of legal terminology that is fundamentally intertwined with its very specific legal system, often itself a product of history that has been formulated and hewn to respond to varying social and cultural trends and phenomena.

Such endeavours are accentuated when translating between French and English: whereas France operates a civil law system that is rooted in the Roman law of Emperor Justinian’s ‘Corpus Juris Civilis’ and was codified by Napoleon in 1804, the English legal system is founded on the common law principles of tradition, custom and precedent that were developed by the inquisitorial approach to court cases adopted in favour of adversarial proceedings during the 12th and 13th centuries. In addition to this differing attitude to codification, the two systems hold contrasting stances on the approach to codes and statutes, with France considering legislation to be the primary source of law and England placing greater weight on judicial precedent.

The skills required by legal translators working between French and English are thus numerous. In order to avoid incomprehensible word-for-word translations, they must first and foremost be possessed of a fundamental understanding of the legal systems functioning in the two countries and an extensive knowledge of the terminology that has been developed to designate the varying concepts, methodologies and institutions. Moreover, they must be both proficient in the specific legal writing style favoured by English lawyers and adept at offsetting that style against the needs, expectations and expertise of the translation’s intended readership.

The role of our translators in the VEF Language and Law Department is therefore to bridge the cultural and linguistic gaps that exist between the French and English legal systems when buying a property in France. They have studied the intricacies of both French and English law; they have received extensive training in facilitating the transition between French and English legal writing styles; and they constantly strive to ensure that the terminology, phraseology and tone of their work is suited to providing you, the client, with a translation that is literate rather than literal.

With VEF, nothing is lost in translation.