NOTICE: Baaij on The Role of Legal Translation in Legal Harmonization

CJW Baaij (ed)'s The Role of Legal Translation in Legal Harmonization has just been published: 

 

Nine distinguished contributors, all leading experts and scholars in multilingual EU Law making, legal translation studies, comparative law and European (private) law, explore and analyse the legal translation praxis within EU legislative institutions appropriate for the purpose of legal harmonization, and examine both the potential and limitations of legal translation in the context of the developments of a single but multilingual EU Legal language. Among the many issues that arise for in-depth analysis in the course of the discussion are the following:defining 'drafting quality';

• translating legal concepts beloning to specific legal systems;
• EU Policies on harmonization of national contract laws;
• legal uniformity vs. uniformity of interpretation and application;
• the effect of full harmonization clauses;
• proportion between general language vocabulary and legal terminoligy; and
• role of English in the EU and the aims of the EU institutions.

The book concludes with a synthesis of the findings and reconmmendations of the various contributions. Most of the chapters were originally presented at a conference organized in January 2011 by the Amsterdam Circle for Law & Language (ACLL) and the Centre for the Study of European Contract Law (CSECL). 

The contributions include:

• The Significance of Legal Translation for Legal Harmonization Cornelis J.W. Baaij.  
• Legal Harmonization Through Legal Translation: Texts that Say the Same Thing? Ingemar Strandvik. 
• ‘Co-revision’: Legal-Linguistic Revision in the European Union ‘Co-decision’ Process Manuela Guggeis and William Robinson.  
• Coping with the Challenges of Legal Translation in Harmonization Susan Sarčević.
• A Dictionary for Legal Translation Marta Chromá. 
• The Influence of Problems of Legal Translation on Comparative Law Research Gerard-Rene´ de Groot.
• Understanding Legal Languages: Linguistic Concerns of the Comparative Lawyer Jaakko Husa.
• English as a Legal Lingua Franca in the EU Multilingual Context Barbara Pozzo. 
• Conclusions Cornelis J.W. Baaij