• Research in Language, 2011, vol. 9.1 • DOI 10.
2478/v10015-011-0015-z
LEGAL TERMINOLOGY: APPROACHES AND
APPLICATIONS
EDITORIAL TO SPECIAL ISSUE ON LEGAL TERMINOLOGY
STANISŁAW GOŹDŹ-ROSZKOWSKI
[email protected]
University of Lodz, Poland
IWONA WITCZAK-PLISIECKA
[email protected]
University of Lodz, Poland
Although terminology understood as a discipline concerned with the study of specialised
vocabulary, i.e. terms, is by no means new, it is only relatively recently that it has begun
to emerge as a fully-fledged scientific endeavour complete with its principles, bases and
methodologies. As an inter- and trans-disciplinary field of knowledge, terminology is
characterised by a plurality of approaches to its theoretical foundations and practical
applications. Despite the diversity of terminological theories and approaches, there seem
to exist certain theoretical and methodological aspects shared by most, if not all of them,
such as recognition of the concept, the nature of the term and its functions in texts; non-
verbal representational forms, knowledge ordering and modelling, terminology and
cognition, lexical pragmatics, and corpus-based terminology (see Laurén and Picht 2006
for a recent comparative presentation of various approaches based on a regional
criterion). At the same time, we are witnessing a gradual but steady shift from the
principles of the Vienna school towards socio-cognitive and corpus-based descriptions of
terminology (see Temmerman 2000, Pearson 1998).
Just as in any LSP subject fields (science, medicine, economics, etc.) terms are
crucial to the transfer of knowledge and overall communication in legal settings. Yet, the
complexity of legal terminology, particularly in the context of Europe’s extreme degree
of linguistic and legal pluralism (Kjær 2007) calls for an independent research field to
deal with both translational and terminological problems. Answering this need, the 1st
International Workshop on Legal Terminology organized by the Department of English
Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Łódź in 2010 aimed to provide an
opportunity for scholars and practitioners (e.g. legal translators, EAP teachers) to share
their ideas and experience of adopting different methodological and theoretical
perspectives on studying legal terminology. It also provided a forum for discussion
focused on the problems of lexical meaning in the legal context, both in a lawyer’s
perspective which naturally focuses on drafting and interpretation and layperson’s
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6 Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski & Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka
understanding of legal texts. Selected contributions included in this volume resulted
from the meeting.
The articles gathered in the present volume are focused on lexical meaning in legal
contexts. They are linked by a controlling idea that words are often defined, understood
and technically interpreted in specific ways when they are constrained by their legal
environment. As mentioned above, this recognition of legal terminology as a cinsisten
field of research invites both theoretical investigations and studies of practical
applications. The volume opens with two contributions in which the authors deal with
perennial issues central to terminology at large and to legal terminology in particular.
Anna Jopek-Bosiacka in “Defining law terms: A cross-cultural perspective” sets out to
explore the main principles and conventions of formulating definitions from a cross-
cultural perspective focusing in particular on such factors as: the type of legal genre,
position in the instrument, type of legal definition, legal system, and branch of law. Her
paper carefully examines the extent to which these factors affect the interpretation and
translation of legal terms. In “Synonymy and polysemy in legal terminology and their
applications to bilingual and bijural translation” Marta Chroma, a lexicography expert,
deftly delves into the realms of legal semantics to discuss at length the phenomena of
synonymy and polysemy in legal terminology. She emphasizes the specificity of bijural
translation and its place in the wider category of intersemiotic translation. The context of
source law and target language is viewed as a decisive factor in determining the meaning
of a legal term. Consequently, translator’s bijural literacy is essential for a competent use
of legal synonyms and correct identification of polysemous terms.
Building a common European legal framework has resulted in considerable attention
paid to translation discrepancies caused by culturally-specific terminology (see, for
example Gotti 2007). The issue of EU-related terminology features in four articles
presented in the present volume. Colin Roberston in “Multilingual legislation in the
European Union. EU and national legislative-language styles and terminology” explores
the nature of legal terminology of the European Union and its relationship to national
legal terminology. In his discussion he takes a comparative look at several languages and
legal cultures. This theme is continued by Iliana Genew-Puhalewa, who in her paper
“European Union terminology unification – directions for the contrastive study of two
Slavic and two non-Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Polish, Modern Greek and English”
puts forward the hypothesis that terminology used in EU legislative texts is becoming
increasingly uniform in different languages and legal cultures. EU terminology is also
considered in the context of interpreter training. The relationship between the EU legal
concepts and the terms used in national legal discourse is also the focus of Martina
Bajcic’s contribution “Conceptualization of legal terms in different fields of law: the
need for a transparent terminological approach”. Bajcic focuses on the process of
integrating concepts of EU law into national legal discourse by using national
terminology belonging to a different field of law. Aware of the considerable risk
involved in using terms of national legal discourse to express notions of EU law, the
author starts by examining the vexed question of identifying terms from a particular
legal domain. Closely related to this is the age-old problem faced by terminologists when
classifying terms found in different albeit overlapping domains. Bajcic examines
practical difficulties involved in classifying terms from the Croatian law by considering
three terms: subsidiarity, proportionality and primacy. Bajcic calls for a transparent
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Legal Terminology: Approaches and Applications (Editorial) 7
terminological approach in order to transfer concepts from one subject field into another.
The next text entitled “Analysis framework for translation of maritime legal documents”
by Mª Isabel del Pozo Triviño presents maritime legal texts as a consistent legal genre
with regard to English-Spanish translation.
Pedagogic issues in legal terminology and translation are raised in three different
articles. First, drawing on her teaching experience in interpreter training, Ewa
Kościałkowska-Okońska in her paper “EU terminology in interpreter training: selected
problem areas connected with EU-related texts” discusses problems unique to both the
enormous demands of interpreting and the specificity of language used in the EU
documents. The difficulty in translating this type of legal texts is compounded by the
fact that the language used in documents is specialist and, at the same time, specific, due
to the terminology used. The author argues that problems that translators and interpreters
may encounter focus, to a large extent, on (un)translatability of certain terms, ambiguity
of EU-speak or textual coherence, or the absence of it, which results from unclear, vague
or ambiguous style of the original.
Teaching highly specific legal terminology is one of the most difficult tasks in the
instruction of legal language according to Snježana Husinec, who in her paper “The
importance of content knowledge for successful legal language acquisition” examines
implications arising from the interconnection between language and law and the extent
to which they affect the process of legal language instruction and acquisition. In doing
so, the author analyses the results of a survey conducted among law students attending
legal language courses at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb and combines it with theoretical
research and her teaching experience.
The next paper “Legal terminology and lesser used languages: the case of Mòcheno”,
written jointly by Elena Chiocchetti and Natascia Ralli, aims at outlining the specific
problems connected with the elaboration of legal and administrative terminology in a
minority, lesser used language for the purpose of designing short ad hoc education
courses addressed to a language minority. It signals unique problems encountered by
terminologists when they do not deal with two fully-fledged legal systems but with one
legal system that needs to be expressed in two languages, one of which lacks the
specialised terminology that must still be developed.
The next paper by Olga Denti and Michela Giordano is a fine example of a
bilingual and bijural analysis of American and Spanish prenuptial agreements Actors and
actions in prenups and capitulaciones matrimoniales: a cross-cultural study. Written
from a genre perspective, the study focuses on a clearly delineated set of terms
connected with the participants of this specific contractual relation. The consistency of a
comparative framework is ensured by aligning the agreements’ respective semantic-
pragmatic units in which these terms are found.
An even broader semantic-pragmatic perspective can be found in “Speed traps and
the right of silence” by Dennis Kurzon. In this paper the author presents considerations
of the right of silence with regard to written texts and in particular two English cases
which reached the European Court of Human Rights. In the discussion, the author
investigates the two cases in terms of icons and indices, claiming that a legal text may be
first be presented as indexical of a basic human right to further develop into an icon of
that right, a “regulatory regime”.
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8 Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski & Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka
The next text, “Translating law into a dictionary: a terminographic model” by Weronika
Szemińska, offers suggestions concerning actual terminographic practice. Drawing upon
the combined specialist knowledge of three disciplines, i.e. terminography, translation
studies and law, the author introduces the concept of the translation dictionary as a
separate type of terminological dictionary in order to prepare the ground for proposing
her model of a dictionary which could serve as a tool for professional translators of legal
texts.
Much has been said about the use of shall in legal language. But if an outside
observer might wonder what is left to investigate, then the paper written by Leszek
Berezowski on “Curious legal conditionals” could be a real eye-opener. It examines the
use of the modal verb shall in the if-clauses of conditionals found in legal English and
somewhat contentiously argues that shall is not inherently deontic in legal English but it
tends to be used as an explicit marker of the authority vested in the author or authors of
spoken and written texts.
References
Kjær, A. (2007) “Legal translation in the European Union: a research field in need of a
new approach. In: Kredens, K. & Goźdź-Roszkowski S. Language and the Law:
International Outlooks
Laurén, Ch. and H. Picht (2006) “Approaches to Terminological Theories: A
Comparative Study of the State-of-the-Art”. In: Heribert Picht (ed.)Modern
Approaches to Terminological Theories and Applications, Bern: Peter Lang
Pearson, Jennifer (1998) Terms in Context, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Temmerman, Rita (2000) Towards New Ways of Terminology Description: the
Sociocognitive Approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
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