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Part of
Handbook of Terminology: Volume 3. Legal Terminology
Edited by Łucja Biel and Hendrik J. Kockaert
[Handbook of Terminology 3] 2023
► pp. 152–172

Legal terms that travel

Constraints to presenting national legal terminology to international audiences

| University of Trieste

This chapter discusses national legal terminology used in texts allowing for the dissemination of national legal knowledge, namely translated domestic legislation, academic literature, and international case law. The purpose of the chapter is to investigate the transfer of national legal terminology from its original national context to a context of a different kind, a process that requires a more or less overt form of translation. The chapter thus explores seven constraints (target audience, lingua franca, legal system of reference, comparative law methods, intertextuality, type of publication, editorial policies and linguistic precedent) that are imposed on text producers (translators, scholars, and drafters) when faced with national legal terminology crossing the ‘natural’ borders of the legal system which conceived it.

Keywords: national legal terminology, legal translation, translation constraints, legal knowledge dissemination, international audience
Article outline
  • 1.Legal terminology in Legal Translation Studies
    • 1.1Legal terminology and the translation for normative purposes
    • 1.2Legal terminology and translation for informative purposes
  • 2.Legal translation and drafting as a form of dissemination of national legal knowledge
  • 3.National legal terminology and constraints
    • 3.1Target audience
    • 3.2 Lingua franca
    • 3.3Legal system of reference
    • 3.4Comparative law methods
    • 3.5Intertextuality
    • 3.6Type of publication
    • 3.7Editorial policies and linguistic precedent
  • Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 1 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hot.3.leg1
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