Translating law in the digital age. Translation problems or matters of legal interpretation?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the issue of how translations of legal contents from webpages are received or interpreted within the target legal system. Our hypothesis is that software developers and companies operating in the digital market and offering multilingual contents, which were created originally in English and translated into Spanish, are not only setting the standards for drafting legal texts for publication on the Internet but also coining (or even imposing) equivalents that do not always take into consideration the target legal culture. Indeed, the major IT companies, with their policy of making contracts freely available for downloading, and with the valuable linguistic resources that they produce and distribute, are not only meeting the requirement of keeping their clients informed but are also becoming the new authority on IT terminology and legal translation. The legal texts produced by these companies constitute a multilingual digital corpus of important value for translators and localizers. We assume that translation techniques and equivalences used in the target text satisfy the legal requirements of the consumer's country of residence and are therefore adapted in order to be fully interpreted according to Spanish law. However this is often not the case as is discussed here. ARTICLE HISTORY

Scientific Production on Legal Translation (1988-2023): A Bibliometric Analysis

“…This is possible to the extent that he or she specializes in different legal systems. His or her task is not the identification of translated terms because they may be different, depending on the country in which they are used (Moreno, 2020;Atabekova, & Gorbatenko, 2017;Bestué, 2016). d) Specialisation function: Legal translation requires the translator to be familiar with specialized texts in the legal area.…”

Legal Translation Versus Legal Interpretation. A Legal-Theoretical Perspective

“…Therefore, translators should not run the risk of upsetting the delicately achieved balance of a legal instrument by "attempting to clarify vague points, obscurities, and ambiguities" [46: 8]. If a translator eliminates ambiguity by choosing one possible meaning over another, they put themselves into the legislator's shoes (from the perspective of a judge) or in the judge's shoes (from the perspective of a legislator); neither role is designed for them 5 : "[i]n regard to ambiguities, it is generally agreed that the translator has no authority to resolve an ambiguity in the source text as this could be an act of interpretation" [45: 92]. The same goes for vagueness.…”

Efficient Search for Equivalents at Your Fingertips – The Specialized Translator’s Dream

“…Thus, both conceptual and linguistic errors in translation may go undetected by the translator. Bestué (2016) , bilingual text alignment tools (Linguee, 5 2lingual 6 ), bilingual dictionaries that also offer aligned corpora (as Reverso dictionary 7 ) and states that "consulting these sources may compel translators to simply select terms and phrases that, having been translated previously, may be considered as validated." However, as she points out, Search engines provide ready-made, statistically-validated solutions for translation problems.…”

“…adopting the most commonly-used translation, when making their translation decisions (…) It is true that translators remain in charge of their own translation decisions, but it is not less true that the viral spread and lightning-fast uptake of equivalents can lead them to discard other translation procedures or equivalents that they fear will have less communicative impact on target readers, who are bound to be users of search engines. (Bestué 2016) The complexity of the search process holds true not only in traditionally complex domains such as legal translation, but also in all specialized fields. 8 Although many new dictionaries and term banks have appeared recently and those already in existence have in some cases been subject to important changes, they still tend to disappoint specialized translators who hope to find all the information they require in lexicographical or terminographical resources.…”