When international case-law meets national law

Abstract

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is an international court set up in 1959 with the aim of ruling on applications alleging violations of the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court’s official languages are English and French, which are also used for delivering and publishing its judgments. In order to decide on the single cases, the ECtHR needs to discuss and recall national and international legislation. This leaves “traces” in the Court’s judgments. The focus of this paper is on one possible type of such traces, i.e. loan words referring to Italian legal concepts and institutions. The paper presents a case study conducted on a corpus of ECtHR judgments published in English. The aims are to propose a methodology for the semi-automatic extraction of loan words and to analyse them in the light of translation techniques.

The use of resources for legal terminological decision-making: patterns and profile variations among institutional translators

“…However, national system-bound terms are also used in texts on the implementation of international instruments and policies at national level, both in monitoring and adjudication procedures (see e.g. Peruzzo, 2019;Prieto Ramos, 2014, pp. 127-129;Tranchant, 2011, pp.…”

Assessing legal terminological variation in institutional translation

“…It is therefore unsurprising that the intricacies of their translation have been the subject of a steady flow of research. In the case of names of national judicial bodies in international settings, their translation has been addressed by several recent studies (see, for example, Millet 2013;Prieto Ramos 2013, 2014bPeñaranda López 2015;Peruzzo 2019). They belong to one of the groups of terms that have been identified in international institutional settings as part of the LETRINT project (Prieto Ramos 2014b, 128-129): culture-bound terms designating legal specificities that must be conveyed in the target language in the selected genres mentioned above.…”

Language for International Communication: Linking Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Language for Specific Purposes in the Era of Multilingualism and Technologies. Volume 4

“…One of such courts is the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, or the Court). It rules on violations of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR, or the Convention) lodged by applicants from 46 Member States of the Council of Europe (CoE) speaking 37 national languages, which creates vast opportunities for the migration of national terms that are bound to the domestic context, also known as systembound terms (Peruzzo, 2019a;2019b), into a supranational context.…”

“…The ECtHR discourse has received scarce linguistic attention (Nikitina, 2018a;2018b), mainly focussed on its most representative genre: the judgment (Weston, 2005;Brannan, 2013;Peruzzo, 2017;2019a;2019b). While the presence of loanwords and system-bound terminology in the ECtHR judgments and decision has been previously acknowledged (Brannan, 2013;Peruzzo, 2019a;2019b), no linguistic study -to the best of my knowledge -has traced the origins and movement of national terminology and phraseology in the ECtHR discourse across its multiple genres.…”