Translation Theory and Legal Translation

الملخص

In our age of globalization and multilingualism there is a
growing demand for competent legal translator. The work attempts to
shed light on the sensitivity of legal texts, and how the translation
should be reliable, i.e., it must produce the intended legal effects.
The study hypothesizes that legal translation is recognized as an
independent area of translation on equal footing with literary
translation, religious translation and technical/scientific translation.
The study starts with viewing some misleading ideas by
translation theorists about translating legal texts. Then text typologies
for translation are fully discussed. The function of legal texts is
identified followed by a detailed discussion of legal translation;
translation and text type. Finally, the status of legal translation is
evaluated on the bases of the recent translation theories, i.e.
Hermeneutics.
The paper comes up with some conclusions; the most important
of which are that translation theory and legal translation are
intertwined and a successful legal translator must develop an
interdisciplinary approach to the subject, thus that any theoretical
approach to legal translation must take account of the legal factors of
the particular communicative situation in the mechanism of law.