Cultural, textual and linguistic aspects of legal translation: A model of text analysis for training legal translators

Abstract

Legal translation training involves the acquisition and development of a set of sub-competences that constitute legal translation competence (Cao, Deborah. 2007. Translating law. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters; Prieto Ramos, Fernando. 2011. Developing legal translation competence: An integrative processoriented approach. Comparative Legilinguistics. International Journal for Legal Communications 5. 7–21; Piecychna, Beata. 2013. Legal translation competence in the light of translational hermeneutics. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 34(47). 141–159; Soriano Barabino, Guadalupe. 2016. Comparative law for legal translators. Oxford: Peter Lang; Soriano Barabino, Guadalupe. 2018. La formación del traductor jurídico: Análisis de la competencia traductora en traducción jurídica y propuesta de programa formativo. Quaderns: Revista de Traduccio 25. 217–229). The development of those sub-competences is part of a complex process where students are faced with different concepts and translation strategies and techniques which are not necessarily easy to grasp for trainee translators (Way, Catherine. 2014. Structuring a legal translation course: A framework for decisionmaking in legal translation training. In Le Cheng, King Kui Sin & Anne Wagner (eds.), The Ashgate handbook of legal translation. Farnham: Ashgate), particularly when applied to a legal context. It is our experience that translation students tend to focus on the product (text production) and do not spend enough time analysing the source text, which results in obvious mistakes in mainly – but not only – cultural (legal), textual and linguistic aspects. The interdisciplinary nature of legal translation calls for an integrative model for teaching and learning. The model presented provides trainees with a framework for source text analysis that places the communicative situation and the translation brief at the core from which three fundamental dimensions, based on the aspects mentioned above, develop. Elements such as the legal cultures involved, legal text typologies or the level of specialisation of terms and discourse are some of the aspects to be considered, so allowing trainees to achieve a thorough understanding of the source text for a conscious translation. The model will be applied to a specific source text and translation brief.