DocumentationComptes rendus

Soriano-Barabino, Guadalupe (2016): Comparative Law for Legal Translators. Bern: Peter Lang, 206 p.[Record]

  • Jaakko Husa

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  • Jaakko Husa
    University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Law is essentially and inseparably interwoven with language. In turn, law and language are both cultural phenomena that can be conceived only if their contexts are taken into account. There are virtually no contemporary legal philosophers who would not hold both of these assumptions as having a sound basis. However, for comparative law as a field of study, the role of language is an eternal obstacle and a challenge. In fact, legal translation has always been regarded as one of the essential questions of comparative law (Pozzo 2012). Likewise, translating legal texts has always been a somewhat specific ordeal for translators. Soriano-Barabino’s book attempts to clarify and discuss the key questions related to legal translating and especially the role of comparative law for legal translators. This book is not a study of legal translation, but rather introduces comparative law’s theories and basic questions for translators of legal documents. In practice, most of the book deals with comparative law but in such a manner that is intended to be especially useful for legal translators, translators-to-be, and translator trainers. Accordingly, comparative lawyers and comparative legal scholars are less likely to find the comparative law discussion in this book particularly useful, but, then again, that is not what the book aims for. The volume is divided into four main parts. The first part seeks to place comparative law and legal translation into perspective by first defining comparative law’s development, nature, object of study and methodology (chapter 1); and second, by offering a brief overview of the main legal families of the world (Chapter 2). The second part (Chapters 3-6) deals with the civil law tradition by introducing the legal systems of Italy (chapter written by Angela Carpi), France, Spain, and Germany (chapter written by Rafael Adolfo Zambrana Kuhn). The basic structure of discussion for each of these legal systems is similar: historical evolution, the organization of law (distinction between public and private law), the court system, and the legal profession. The underlying idea for the second part is not to provide full accounts, but rather, to make it possible for a translator to “be able to grasp the main features of these legal systems and have the necessary competence to do research and find the information needed to correctly understand source texts.” (p. 35) The third part examines the common law tradition covering England and Wales (Chapter 7), the United States (Chapter 8), and Ireland (Chapter 9). As already pointed out above, the aim is not to provide full accounts of these legal systems but to introduce such main aspects as may be particularly useful for translators. The structure for presenting these common law systems is basically similar to the one used while discussing the civil law systems in the previous part. Yet, the history of the English law is left out because it is already shortly explained in chapter 2 when the development and origins of the common law system are elucidated. Chapter 7 does not take into account the possible ramifications of the United Kingdom’s separation from the European Union but it does contain an explanatory footnote (p. 101) informing the reader about the looming separation and its possible effects. Although the individual chapters about legal systems are very brief, they manage to offer surprisingly decent overviews. Moreover, these chapters contain an unexpected amount of useful native legal terminology. Especially the tables of court systems (jurisdiction, structure and levels of courts) with English translations seem quite useful both for translators and comparative lawyers. The fourth and final part assumes a more practical approach by trying to merge legal translation and …

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