Cover not available
Part of
Handbook of Terminology: Volume 3. Legal Terminology
Edited by Łucja Biel and Hendrik J. Kockaert
[Handbook of Terminology 3] 2023
► pp. 90–123

Variation of legal terms in monolingual and multilingual contexts

Types, distribution, attitudes and causes

| University of Warsaw

This chapter investigates the variation of legal terminology – types, distribution, attitudes towards it and causes in monolingual and multilingual settings. The chapter proposes the typologies of legal variants according to: formal/conceptual distance (linguistic, denominative, conceptual), time (synchronic, diachronic), acceptance (preferred, permitted, deprecated, proposed) and distribution (intrasystemic, intersystemic, hybrid variants). Attitudes to legal variants vary: linguistic and denominative variation tends to be regarded as undesirable – as a violation of the consistency and continuity principles while conceptual variation may be a useful drafting technique. The final part adapts Freixa’s (2006) typology of the causes of variation (functional, dialectal, discursive, cognitive, interlinguistic) to the legal context, extending it to include causes related to formal and conceptual properties of terms that trigger variation in translation.

Keywords: variation, synonymy, legal terms, variant, translation, multilingual law
Article outline
  • 1.Clarifying key concepts: Variation, synonymy and polysemy
  • 2.The many faces of variation: Types of legal terminological variants
    • 2.1Conceptual distance between variants
      • Linguistic variants
      • Denominative variants
      • Conceptual variants
    • 2.2Time: Diachronic and synchronic variants
    • 2.3Acceptability of variants
  • 3.Distribution of variants: Distributional distance
    • 3.1Intrasystemic variants
      • 3.1.1Intratextual intrasystemic variants
        • Variants at the phrase level: Synonym-strings
        • Variants beyond the phrase level
      • 3.1.2Intertextual intrasystemic variants
    • 3.2Intersystemic variation
    • 3.3Hybrid multilingual settings
      • Multilingual law
      • Transposition
      • Translation
  • 4.Attitudes towards variation
    • 4.1Variation as a violation of the consistency and continuity principles in drafting and translation
    • 4.2Conceptual variation as a drafting technique
  • 5.Causes of legal terminology variation
  • 6.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.var1
References
Adams, Kenneth A.
2013 A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. 3rd ed. Chicago: American Bar Association.Google Scholar
Adler, Mark
2012 “The Plain Language Movement.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, edited by L. M. Solan and P. M. Tiersma. Oxford: Oxford Handbooks Online. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alcaraz Varó, Enrique and Brian Hughes
2002 Legal Translation Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Bajčić, Martina and Katja Dobrić Basaneže
2021 “Considering foreignization and domestication in EU legal translation: a corpus-based study.” Perspectives 29(5):706–721. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bąkowski, Tomasz, Piotr Bielski, Krzysztof Kaszubowski, Marcin Kokoszczyński, Jakub Stelina, Jarosław Warylewski, and Grzegorz Wierczyński
2003 Zasady techniki prawodawczej. Komentarz. Online: ABC Lex Omega.Google Scholar
Barton, Jill and Rachel H. Smith
2019 The Handbook for the New Legal Writer. 2nd ed. New York: Wolters Kluwer.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K.
2006 “Legal Genres.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, edited by Keith Brown, 1–7. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biel, Łucja
2006 “Incongruity of Company Law Terms: Categorization of Polish Business Entities and their English Equivalents.” Translation Journal 10(4), [URL]
2014 Lost in the Eurofog. The Textual Fit of Translated Law. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “Quality in institutional EU translation. Parameters, policies and practices.” In Quality aspects in institutional translation, edited by Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel and Krzysztof Łoboda, 31–57. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
2022 “Translating Legal Texts.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, 379–400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biel, Łucja, Agnieszka Biernacka, and Anna Jopek-Bosiacka
2018 “Collocations of Terms in EU Competition Law: A Corpus Analysis of EU English Collocations.” In Language and Law: The Role of Language and Translation in EU Competition Law, edited by Silvia Marino, Łucja Biel, Martina Bajčić and Vilelmini Sosoni, 249–274. Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biel, Łucja and Agnieszka Doczekalska
2020 “How do supranational terms transfer into national legal systems? A corpus-informed study of EU English terminology in consumer protection directives and UK, Irish and Maltese transposing acts.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 26(2):184–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biel, Łucja and Dariusz Koźbiał
2020 “How do translators handle (near-) synonymous legal terms? A mixed-genre parallel corpus study into the variation of EU English-Polish competition law terminology.” Estudios de Traducción 10:69–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biel, Łucja and Izabela Pytel
2021 “Corrigenda of EU Legislative Acts as an Indicator of Quality Assurance Failures: A Micro-Diachronic Analysis of Errors Rectified in the Polish Corrigenda.” In Institutional Translation and Interpreting: Assessing Practices and Managing for Quality, edited by Fernando Prieto Ramos, 150–173. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Biel, Łucja and Vilelmini Sosoni
2019 “EU legal culture and translation in the era of globalisation: the hybridisation of EU terminology on the example of competition law.” In Legal Linguistics beyond the borders: Language and Law in a World of Media, Globalisation and Social Conflicts. Relaunching the International Language and Law Association, edited by Friedemann Vogel, 208–229. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot.Google Scholar
Bowker, Lynne
2015 “Terminology and translation.” In Handbook of Terminology, edited by Hendrik J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 304–323. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bowker, Lynne and Shane Hawkins
2006 “Variation in the organization of medical terms: Exploring some motivations for term choice.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 12(1):79–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bromwich, William and Pietro Manzella
2018 “Shock absorbers, tax wedges and white resignations: language challenges in comparative industrial relations.” The Translator 24(1):70–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butt, Peter and Richard Castle
2006 Modern Legal Drafting: A Guide to Using Clearer Language. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chiocchetti, Elena, Tanja Wissik, Vesna Lušicky, and Michael Wetzel
2017 “Quality assurance in multilingual legal databases.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 27:164–188.Google Scholar
Chromá, Marta
2011 “Synonymy and Polysemy in Legal Terminology and Their Applications to Bilingual and Bijural Translation.” Research in Language 9(1):31–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crabbe, V. C. R. A. C.
1993 Legislative Drafting. London: Cavendish Publishing Limited.Google Scholar
Daille, Béatrice
2005 “Variations and application-oriented terminology engineering.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 11(1):181–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daille, Béatrice, Benoît Habert, Christian Jacquemin, and Jean Royauté
1996 “Empirical observation of term variations and principles for their description.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 3(2):197–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dannemann, Gerhard
2008 “Drafting Principles of Existing European Contract Law.” In Drafting Legislation: A Modern Approach, edited by Constantin Stefanou and Helen Xanthaki, 165–176. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
de Bessé, Bruno, Blaise Nkwenti-Azeh, and Juan C. Sager
1997 “Glossary of terms used in terminology.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 4(1):117–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DGT, Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission
2015 DGT Translation Quality Guidelines. [URL]
Doczekalska, Agnieszka
2018 “Legal Languages in Contact: EU Legislative Drafting and Its Consequences for Judicial Interpretation.” In Language and Law: The Role of Language and Translation in EU Competition Law, edited by Silvia Marino, Łucja Biel, Martina Bajčić and Vilelmini Sosoni, 163–178. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doczekalska, Agnieszka and Łucja Biel
2022 “Interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic translation in law.” In Translation Beyond Translation Studies, edited by Kobus Marais, 99–118. London: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
EC, European Commission
2012 Quantifying Quality Costs and the Cost of Poor Quality in Translation. Quality Efforts and the Consequences of Poor Quality in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar
EU, European Union
2015 Joint Practical Guide of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission for persons involved in the drafting of European Union legislation. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar
Fernández-Silva, Sabela
2016 “The cognitive and rhetorical role of term variation and its contribution to knowledge construction in research articles.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 22(1):52–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freixa, Judit
2006 “Causes of denominative variation in terminology: A typology proposal.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 12(1):51–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freixa, Judit and Sabela Fernández-Silva
2017 “Terminological variation and the unsaturability of concepts.” In Multiple Perspectives on Terminological Variation, edited by Patrick Drouin, Aline Francœur, John Humbley and Aurélie Picton, 155–180. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Galdia, Marcus
2009 Legal Linguistics. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Garner, Bryan A.
2001 A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
ed. 2009 Black’s Law Dictionary. 9th ed. St. Paul, MN: West.Google Scholar
Goźdź-Roszkowski, Stanisław
2013 “Exploring near-synonymous terms in legal language. A corpus-based, phraseological perspective.” Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 12:94–109.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Daniel
ed. 2010 Jowitt’s Dictionary of English Law. 3rd ed. London: Thomson Reuters.Google Scholar
Gustafsson, Marita
1984 “The syntactic features of binomial expressions in legal English.” Text – Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 4(1–3):123–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guzmán, Diego and Fernando Prieto Ramos
2021 “Assessing legal terminological variation in institutional translation: The case of national court names in the human rights monitoring procedures of the United Nations.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 7(2):224–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanzl, Jan and John Beaven
2017 “Quality assurance at the Council of the EU’s Translation Service.” In Quality aspects in institutional translation, edited by Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel and Krzysztof Łoboda, 139–153. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Hourani-Martín, Dunia and Encarnación Tabares-Plasencia
2020 “Morphosyntactic and semantic behaviour of legal phraseological units: A case study in Spanish verb-noun constructions about money laundering.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 26(1):108–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Infoterm
2005 Guidelines for Terminology Policies. Formulating and implementing terminology policy in language communities. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.Google Scholar
ISO 704
2009 Terminology work – Principles and methods. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.Google Scholar
ISO 17100
2015 Translation services – Requirements for translation services. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.Google Scholar
ISO 18587
2017 Translation services – Post-editing of machine translation output – Requirements. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.Google Scholar
ISO 1087
2019 Terminology work and terminology science – Vocabulary. Geneva: International Standardization Organization.Google Scholar
ISO 20771
2020 Legal translation – Requirements. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.Google Scholar
Kjær, Anne Lise
2007 “Legal Translation in the European Union: A Research Field in Need of a New Approach.” In Language and the Law: International Outlooks, edited by Krzysztof Kredens and Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski, 69–95. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Krug, Manfred, Julia Schlüter, and Anette Rosenbach
2013 “Introduction: Investigating language variation and change.” In Research Methods in Language Variation and Change, edited by Julia Schlüter and Manfred Krug, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
L’Homme, Marie-Claude
2020 “Being a privileged witness of twenty years of research in terminology: An editorial statement.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 26(1):1–6. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
L’Homme, Marie-Claude, Ulrich Heid, and Juan C. Sager
2003 “Terminology during the past decade (1994–2004): An Editorial statement.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 9(2):151–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Law, Jonathan and Elizabeth A. Martin
eds. 2009 A Dictionary of Law. 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levý, Jiří
1967 [2000] “Translation as a decision process.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lauwrence Venuti, 148–159. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Andrzej
2006 Polski język prawny. Wybrane zagadnienia. Warszawa: LexisNexis.Google Scholar
Mariani, Jessica
2021 “Migration terminology in the EU Institutions: Overview and patterns of use of terms from 1950 to 2016.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 27(1):35–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mattila, H. E. S.
2006 Comparative Legal Linguistics. Hampshire: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Mayoral Asensio, Roberto
2003 Translating Official Documents. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar
Mellinkoff, David
1963 The Language of the Law. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.Google Scholar
Monteagudo Medina, Mary Ann
2019 “A corpus-based study of terminological variation in business incorporation documents from the United States and Peru.” Translation Spaces 8(1):117–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
OPC, Office of Parliamentary Counsel
2016 Reducing complexity in legislation. Online: Australian Government.Google Scholar
Örücü, Esin
2002 “Law as Transposition.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 51(2):205–223. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pacho Aljanati, Lucía
2015 The Court of Justice of the European Union’s case law on linguistic divergences (2007–2013): interpretation criteria and implications for the translation of EU legislation. Ph.D. thesis, Departament de Dret Públic i de Ciències Historicojurídiques, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Perju, Vlad
2012 “Constitutional Transplants, Borrowing, and Migrations.” In Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, edited by Michel Rosenfeld and András Sajó, 1304–1327. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Picht, Heribert and Jennifer Draskau
1985 Terminology: an Introduction. Guildford: University of Surrey.Google Scholar
Pozzo, Barbara
2020 “Looking for a Consistent Terminology in European Contract Law.” Lingue Culture Mediazioni / Languages Cultures Mediation 7(1):103–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prieto Ramos, Fernando and Diego Guzmán
2018 “Legal Terminology Consistency and Adequacy as Quality Indicators in Institutional Translation: A Mixed-Method Comparative Study.” In Institutional Translation for International Governance: Enhancing Quality in Multilingual Legal Communication, edited by Fernando Prieto Ramos, 81–101. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Prieto Ramos, Fernando and Albert Morales Moreno
2019 “Terminological innovation and harmonization at international organizations: Can too many cooks spoil the broth?” In Legal Translation. Current Issues and Challenges in Research, Methods and Applications, edited by Ingrid Simonnæs and Marita Kristiansen, 87–110. Berlin: Frank & Timme.Google Scholar
Robertson, Colin
2015 “EU Multilingual Law: Interfaces of Law, Language and Culture.” In Language and Culture in EU Law. Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Susan Šarčević, 33–52. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Rogers, Margaret
2004 “Multidimensionality in concepts systems: A bilingual textual perspective.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 10(2):215–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sager, Juan C.
1990 A Practical Course in Terminology Processing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Šarčević, Susan
1997 New Approach to Legal Translation. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
2012 “Coping with the Challenges of Legal Translation in Harmonization.” In The Role of Legal Translation in Legal Harmonization, edited by C. J. W. Baaij, 83–107. Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
Scott, Juliette R.
2019 Legal Translation Outsourced. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sosoni, Vilelmini and John O’Shea
2021 “Translating property law terms: an investigation of Greek notarial deeds and their English translations.” Perspectives 29(2):184–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefaniak, Karolina
2017 “Terminology work in the European Commission. Ensuring high-quality translation in a multilingual environment.” In Quality aspects in institutional translation, edited by Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel and Krzysztof Łoboda, 109–121. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Strandvik, Ingemar
2012 “Legal Harmonization Through Legal Translation: Texts that Say the Same Thing?” In The Role of Legal Translation in Legal Harmonization, edited by C. J. W. Baaij, 25–49. Alphen aan den Rijn: Wolters Kluwer.Google Scholar
2017 “Evaluation of outsourced translations. State of play in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation (DGT).” In Quality aspects in institutional translation, edited by Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel and Krzysztof Łoboda, 123–137. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Temmerman, Rita
2000 Towards New Ways of Terminology Description: The sociocognitive approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tiersma, Peter M.
1999 Legal Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Vigier, Francisco Javier and María del Mar Sánchez Ramos
2017 “Using parallel corpora to study the translation of legal system-bound terms: The case of names of English and Spanish courts.” In Computational and corpus-based phraseology, Second International Conference, Europhras 2017, London, proceedings, edited by Ruslan Mitkov, 260–273. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watson, Alan
1974 Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.Google Scholar
Weston, Martin
2005 “Characteristics and constraints of producing bilingual judgments: the example of the European Court of Human Rights.” In Jurilinguistics: between Law and Language, edited by Jean-Claude Gémar and Nicholas Nicholas Kasirer, 445–459. Brussels: Bruylant.Google Scholar