EU legal terminology made easier at TermCoord seminar

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legal seminar photo

Legal terminology in the context of EU legal drafting and translation proved to be a topic of great interest to our colleagues. Last Friday about 300 people from different institutions gathered in the Schuman Chamber in Luxembourg, and the videoconference rooms in Brussels, to follow the seminar on legal terminology organised by TermCoord. In his welcome speech, Johannes Van Hoof, Director of the Technology and Support Services for Translation, emphasised the significance of using correct terminology in legal texts and the importance of translators being familiar with developments in legal terminology. Afterwards, the participants had the chance to watch two engaging and thought-provoking presentations: the first was a lawyer-linguist’s view on EU terminology and the second was about difficulties in EU legal translation.

The first speaker, Colin Robertson, former lawyer-linguist at the Council of the European Union, approached legal terminology in the complex EU context from a lawyer-linguist’s point of view. He proposed a systematic method for studying legal terms, to be applied by lawyer-linguists when revising legal texts; in particular to verify term equivalence and to ensure that legislative texts have the same effect in all language versions. This method – which can also provide useful insights for translators – involves the analysis of legal texts and their terminology based on four viewpoints: law, policy, action and language, and asking and answering questions such as: Which system (EU, national or international law) does the term belong to? What legal consequences does it trigger? Is the term connected with a policy field? Is there any shift in meaning when the term is used in an EU context? What is the function of the term, what action is intended by it?

After describing the specificities of EU legal English and the implications for terminology, the speaker focused on the multilingual interpretation of terms in EU texts, drawing attention to the difference between linguistic and legal meaning and providing an illustrative example of the Court of Justice’s judicial interpretation of multilingual texts and terminology. Finally, Mr Robertson explained how, in his view, a semiotic approach can contribute to the analysis of concepts and terms.

 

The second speaker, József Villányi, formerly lawyer-linguist and référendaire at the Court of Justice, currently head of the Hungarian Translation Unit at the European Parliament, expounded on the difficulties of legal translation within the context of the European Union. As background, he provided a global picture of the complexity of law and legal language, as well as a detailed overview of the theories, types and history of legal translation. He then outlined the particular characteristics of EU law and legal translation, pointing out that although imperfection is an inherent feature of EU legal translation, it still has to produce reliable and accurate texts in order to ensure equality before the law for all EU citizens and identical legal effects, independent of the language version of the legal act.

The second part of the presentation dealt with practical issues like how to identify and find correct equivalents to legal terms, what reliable sources to use, and the criteria for good legal translation; namely formal and functional equivalence and internal and external terminological coherence. Functional equivalence was explored in more detail, as the texts must have identical meaning and identical legal effect, which determines the choice of terms. The speaker explained the difficulties related to full and partial equivalence, lack of equivalence and other problems regarding the translation of EU legal texts, and proposed possible solutions. Finally, several real life examples were cited in order to demonstrate what tangible legal consequences translation errors may have. Throughout his presentation, Mr. Villányi emphasised the special role and responsibility of translators in the EU legislative process, as they produce texts which are considered to be originals of equal authenticity. Therefore, in this context legal translation is to be regarded as legal drafting, which has to be integrated in the workflow of the legislative procedure from the beginning and be based on the common and autonomous terminological systems for EU law.

 

If you want to read more about these intriguing issues, you can access the two presentations via the following links.

Colin Robertson’s presentation

József Villányi’s presentation

 

Should you have any related questions or comments, please write to us at dgtrad.termcoord@ep.europa.eu.

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