In the area of legal interpretation the question of the status of legal texts has been subject to discussions, especially in the last two decades. Two primary points of view have been put up: 1) the legal text is to be seen as an independent unti of communication that has normative power and meaning in its own right. To a certain extent, legal interpretation in the continental legal system is base on this assumption, as well as the more textually oriented views on interpretation in the common law countries; 2) the legal text is to be seen as an instance of text produced in communication and subject to the inherent constraints of human language and means of communication. Especially relevant here is contextuality and co-textuality of the meaning of legal terms and the pragmatic fuzziness of human language. Traditionally, legal translation has taken the first point of view as its basic assumption. In this paper the author looks at the implications of the second point of view as point of departure for developing relevant translation strategies and for evaluating legal translations.