Book reviewTranslation and the Law Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995. 337 pp. ISBN 90 272 3183 4 (Eur.) / 55619-627-X (US.) Hfl. 130 USD 75.00 (American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series, 8).
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As the world has become the much-glorified and equally vilified global village, there is at the same time a growing awareness of the pitfalls of linguistic and, more generally, cultural diversity, impeding efficient cross-cultural communication. One of the fields in which the problems related to globalization are acutely felt is in the legal profession, which is highly internationalized yet lacks a single common (legal) language and (legal) culture. Comparative law and legal translation are new branches on an old tree, and are attracting an ever-larger audience among legal and translational professionals alike, scholars as well as practitioners. The interdiscipline of legal translation and its oral counterpart, judicial interpreting, have become the subject of a number of recent publications worldwide (mostly journal articles; but see the recent Berk-Seligson 1990, Colin and Morris 1996, de Jongh 1992, Edwards 1995, Rayar and Wadsworth 1996, Weisflog 1996, among others). The volume under review here, Translation and the Law, edited by Morris Marshall from the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, is an exemplary instance of this new and vigorous professional interest, one which significantly comes from a bilingual region.