The present paper—taking the example of the English translation of the Hungarian Civil Code of 2013—aims to give an overview on the legal and terminology-related challenges and pitfalls that might occur during the process of translating a civil code with civil law traditions into the language of the common law world. An attempt is made to categorise terminology-related conceptual problems and elaborate how the different types of translation methods (functional equivalence, paraphrasing and neologism) could be applied; moreover, how a kind of legal-linguistic checks-and-balances can be achieved through the well-dosed combination, having also the ratio of similarities to differences (SD-ratio or SD-relationship) of legal concepts behind the respective terms in mind. Legal translators must act beyond the role of a simple translator: they must be comparatists, being aware of the legal origin of the relevant concepts and using the methods of comparative private law and translation studies at the same time, since both law and language are system-bound and are heavily influenced by the cultural and social environment. The authors strive to identify the significance of those problems (and possible solutions) from the perspective of how language-related aspects can perform some fine-tuning on the comparative methodology and findings, whether they are barriers only or provide also an opportunity to verify or refute prima facie comparative results. Comparative law—no doubt—supports legal translation, but their relationship is reciprocal: legal-linguistic subjects and problems emerging in the course of legal translation supply valuable feedback and further sources of inspiration.
Abstract:Cohabitation is a factual question in Hungarian law (living in a financial and emotional community in a common household), it does not constitute civil status, and is extended to same-sex couples, too. The default property regime is "participation of acquisitions." While the constitutional notion of marriage in Hungary covers the conjugal union of a man and a woman, registered partnership (reserved for same-sex couples) has existed since 2009, the latter constitutes a civil status and has the same legal effects as marriage except the presumption of paternity, the possibility of joint adoption and of taking part in artificial human reproduction, and the right to use each other's name or a joint family name. The default property regime is "community of property".
AbstractStrict contractual liability, foreseeability and non-cumul in the new Hungarian Civil Code are a living laboratory of legal transplantation. After an introduction (I) an overview is provided on the state of the art on legal transplants in seven theses (II). A case study follows next (III), sorted into three categories: ‘full legal transplants’ (comparative analyses took place both before and after the transplantation); ‘limping legal transplants’ (no a priori comparative considerations took place but the comparative toolbox is used in interpreting the new rules) and ‘surprising legal transplants,’ based on the spontaneous intuitions of the legislator having resulted in rejection and/or conversion into a ‘legal irritant’. The conclusions (IV) verify the significance of comparative analyses both in the pre- and post-transplantation phase.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.