Kjaer on Translation of Judgments of the ECtHR into Non-Official Languages @KjrAnne @OxUniPress

Anne Lise Kjaer, Translation of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights into Non-official Languages: The Politics and Practice of European Multilingualism, in Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law (Anne Lise Kjaer and Joanna Lam, eds.,Oxford University Press, Forthcoming)(Oxford Studies in Language and Law).

The paper examines the role that translation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has played in the dialogue between the Member States of the Council of Europe and the Court over time. The judgments of the ECHR are produced in the two official languages, English and French, only. Translation into other languages was never an issue in the discussions leading to the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights, and not until the beginning of the reform process at the turn of the century was translation of ECHR judgments into non-official languages put on the agenda. It was introduced into the reform discourse under the heading of Member States’ implementation of the convention and their knowledge and understanding of the Court’s case law. The paper traces the development of translation arguments in the reform discourse and discusses the possible reasons why translation into languages other than English and French was not an issue until the Court faced challenges from the Member States in the early 2000s. It is argued that the choice of language policy and considerations regarding translation into the national languages of the Member States indicate the institutional balance that exists at any given time in the interface between the national and European level of lHuman Riights law.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Lo on the Need for a Clearer Set of Arbitration Rules on the Issues of Translation and Language Interpretation

Chang-fa Lo, National Taiwan University, has published Beyond Semantics and Semiotics ─ Arguing for a Clearer Set of Arbitration Rules on the Issues of Translation and Language Interpreting at 9 Contemporary Asia Arbitration Journal 197 (2016). Here is the abstract.

Although the linguistic issues concerning the appropriate and accurate translation of documents and concerning language interpreting of statements in an arbitration proceeding are important, it is of even higher systemic importance that legal issues relating to translation and language interpreting are properly identified and addressed in arbitration rules. The paper argues that translation and language interpreting between different languages in arbitration and other legal proceedings involves certain important legal issues. Since translation and language interpreting involves legal issues, the paper argues that it is legally and practically desirable to include certain provisions in arbitration rules to address such legal issues so as to avoid translation and interpreting being made and conducted in a manipulated or distorted manner. The paper proposes some general principles to be included in the arbitration rules, such as the requirement of good faith in translation; the requirement that all translation and interpreting are subject to the other party’s challenge, among others. The paper also proposes some specific principles to be included in arbitration rules, such as the submitting party to be responsible for the result of its translation; an interpreter to be prohibited to actually help correct, modify or distort the statement of the party, and the translator or language interpreter to be prohibited to actually “interpret” or “distort” the law or contract provision or the evidence.

Leung on Translation Equivalence as Legal Fiction

Janny H. C. Leung, University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Arts, School of English, has published Translation Equivalence as Legal Fiction in The Ashgate Handbook of Legal Translation 57 (K. K. Sin, A. Wagner, and L. Cheng, eds.; Ashgate, 2016). Here is the abstract.

A translated text shall be the same as the original text. This simple and often assumed, but hardly incontrovertible requirement provides the foundation of the language policy of many bilingual or multilingual jurisdictions (hereafter, ‘bilingual jurisdictions’). An important question associated with the proposition persists, however, regarding the kind of equivalence that underlies the stated notion of ‘sameness’. Bilingual jurisprudence assumes that a translation and its original will carry the same meaning. Yet such an assumption is frequently challenged by instances where textual differences are discovered that call for painstaking reconciliation based on interpretative principles. Although it is widely recognised outside law that translations can hardly be perfect, bilingual legal systems rely on an unsafe assumption of translation equivalence, presumably because for law in particular the notion has a certain utility. Is textual equivalence, in these circumstances, a legal fiction (as historically ‘benefit of clergy’, John Doe and ‘steward of the Chiltern Hundreds’ were, and others remain today)? If so, what function, as a part of legal reasoning, does this putative legal fiction serve? This chapter analyses the specific nature and significance of translation equivalence as a legal fiction, as well as the purposes it may serve. That analysis is then used to illustrate broader issues regarding law, translation, and the relationship between the two.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Tilburg Law Review's Special Issue, Fall 2017: "Translating Law"

Via Twitter @C_Bouteligier

Call for Papers Tilburg Law Review: 'Translating Law'

Tilburg Law Review (TiLR) invites article submissions for its fall 2017 special issue on 'Translating Law'. We imagine this double issue primarily as a collection of articles in law and humanities, but we welcome submissions from other disciplines as well. This issue will also contain the Montesquieu Lecture that Boaventura de Sousa Santos will deliver at Tilburg University in the spring of 2017.
Possible topics include:

• Translations between legal languages, legal cultures
• The right to translation
• Translating legal fictions, legal metaphors
• Translating across disciplines
• Global law as a translation project
• Court interpreters, oral translation, translation as performance
• Legal mistranslations and legal untranslatables
• Copyright and translation rights
• Translating flight narratives in asylum procedures
• Law and its others; law and the ‘other scene’; translating trauma; translating testimony
• Translating between different conceptions of law

Tilburg Law Review is a peer-reviewed academic print journal of international and European law. This special issue seeks to continue the legacy of Willem Witteveen, a professor of jurisprudence at Tilburg Law School who tragically passed away in the MH17 disaster in Ukraine of July 2014. Willem Witteveen was an interdisciplinary scholar who created multiple spaces for law and humanities in the Netherlands.
Practical Information:

• Submission: 15 Dec. 2016 (deadline)

• Notification: 15 Feb. 2017

• Publication: TLR Autumn issue, Volume 22 2017 (double issue)

• Procedure: Submit an anonymous manuscript via http://tilr.edmgr.com/ after you have registered as user; Submissions will be reviewed following the regular blind-review process; TLR does not accept any submissions that count over 10.000 words; All submissions must comply with the OSCOLA citation system.

For more details, please visit our website.
Or contact us via email: tilburglawreview@tilburguniversity.edu

Ricca on Law, Cultural Categories, and Legal Geographies

Mario Ricca, University of Parma, has published Errant Law: Spaces and Subjects. Here is the abstract.

The essay addresses the following topics: I will talk about the intertwining between cultural categories and spatial categories. The first axis for the analysis will address the interspatial blurring and blending produced by the translating of the individuals through manifold and culturally plural circuits of state/territorial sovereignty. The second axis will focus on the intercultural translation intended as place of convergence and condensation of categorical connotations used by different cultures for marking the space. I will try to show how translating cultures, each into another, by means of law’s spectrum could be equivalent and coextensive with translating different ‘spatialities’, and viceversa. Reaching this interlocutory target allows for the configuration of inter-spaces capable of working as a platform to assure the legal relevance of different culturally oriented subjective agencies. The theoretical toolkit to investigate these topics is “legal chorology”. It will be explained by these sequential steps: a. Legal chorology and a timely intercultural translation. b. Inter-spatial dynamics and cognitive deficiencies of legal qualifications across cultures. Subsequently, I will apply the above considerations to envisage a pluralistic legal approach conceived beyond the exclusive use of inter-normative devices and inter-legality.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Legal Translation As Knowledge Transfer

Lena Foljanty, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences & Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, has published Legal Transfers as Processes of Cultural Translation: On the Consequences of a Metaphor at Kritische Vierteljahresschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, Heft 2 / 2015. pp. 89-107. Here is the abstract.

During the last decade, cultural studies faced a so-called “translational turn”. The concept of translation was taken up and reinterpreted in a figurative sense. The concept of translation is no longer confined to the process of putting a text from one language into another, but describes also processes in which foreign knowledge, values or practices are adapted. The article deals with the question whether this expanded concept of translation proves to be fruitful in order to gain a better understanding of legal transfers. By discussing ideas of Walter Benjamin, Homi K. Bhabha and Dipesh Chakrabarty on translation it shows how the concept of translation opens our view for the complex positioning of the actors, which is characteristic for transfer processes and which enables reflecting the transformations that take place beyond the idea of a linear give-and-take.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Process and Concept of Translation as a Transfer of Knowledge

Lena Foljanty, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences; Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, has published Legal Transfers as Processes of Cultural Translation: On the Consequences of a Metaphor in Kritische Vierteljahresschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, Heft 2 / 2015, S. 89-107 (Der Beitrag ist hier auf Deutsch erschienen: Rechtstransfer als kulturelle Übersetzung. Zur Tragweite einer Metapher). Here is the abstract.

During the last decade, cultural studies faced a so-called “translational turn”. The concept of translation was taken up and reinterpreted in a figurative sense. The concept of translation is no longer confined to the process of putting a text from one language into another, but describes also processes in which foreign knowledge, values or practices are adapted. The article deals with the question whether this expanded concept of translation proves to be fruitful in order to gain a better understanding of legal transfers. By discussing ideas of Walter Benjamin, Homi K. Bhabha and Dipesh Chakrabarty on translation it shows how the concept of translation opens our view for the complex positioning of the actors, which is characteristic for transfer processes and which enables reflecting the transformations that take place beyond the idea of a linear give-and-take.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Workshop On the Role of Language, Linguistics, and Translation In Developing Precedent In EU Law

From Karen McAuliffe, University of Exeter, news of a one-day workshop on "Precedent in EU Law: The Linguistic Aspect," to be held at the Dun Library, Dublin, Ireland on December 5, 2015. Register online here.

Here's more.

A Blog On Legal Translation

Of interest: this blog, devoted to legal translation. It's called From Words to Deeds. Check it out here.