Research Articles
Global Law as Translated Text: Mapping Institutional Legal Translation
Author:
Fernando Prieto-Ramos
Centre for Legal and Institutional Translation Studies (Transius), Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, University of Geneva
Abstract
As international organizations rely on translation to produce and enforce legal instruments in multiple languages, global law can be regarded as a network of translated texts. To shed light on the multilingual dimension of international and supranational law, this study presents an interdisciplinary mapping of legal genres in three representative settings: the UN, the WTO, the EU, and their respective adjudicative bodies. Genres are classified under three text typologies corresponding to three categories of legal procedures and text production: law-making, compliance monitoring and adjudication. The resulting taxonomies and their legal contextualization reveal important commonalities as regards the interconnection between legal text-types and functions, as well as differences that reflect the nature of each institutional legal system, including variations in the level of multilingualism. This mapping is considered a condition for further investigations into the scope and features of institutional legal translation, with the ultimate aim of improving its quality.
Published on
05 Oct 2017.
Peer Reviewed
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