Local vs. International Legal Cultures: The Linguistic Confrontation

Translating is an act of transfer of a word—or an expression—along with its internal meanings from a source language text to a target language text. But translating word for word can never be possible: every language has its own characteristics and its own autonomy. Worse is the translation between languages that do not belong to the same roots, as French vs. Arabic, or languages that are half cognates, as Anglo-Saxon vs. French, etc… Besides this difficulty, the field of specialization is another obstacle in translation, mainly for those who are specialized in a field but are not translators. My modest contribution raises the difficulties the translator faces in the field of legal system. Most legal systems are specific, particular and culture-based. Thus, there are some disparities between these systems all around the world. It is, therefore, a challenging field in the domain of translation because of its linguistic register. Then: How do we translate? What do we translate, mainly when the target language does not possess in its judicial system legal instances, as ‗barrister‘, ‗advocate‘, etc…? The register uncommonness makes the translator, who has no clear-cut knowledge of legal linguistic and semantic nature, imprisoned or handicapped.