The Role of Legal Translation in Legal Harmonization

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 sunthesis 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).