Lost in the Eurofog: the textual fit of translated law

摘要

There are many signs that legal translation is witnessing a major transformation. In recent times it has emerged as a 'multifaceted and dynamically changing profession' (Borja & Prieto, 2013, back cover), faced with a multiplicity of dilemmas and challenges of many different sorts. In an era characterised not only by increased volumes of translated legal texts in a growing range of social and communicative situations but also, at a broader level, by the political dynamics of (legal) cultures and languages decisively marked by cultural clashes and asymmetry (Vidal, 2013), legal translation proves to be a complex decision-making activity with far-reaching implications in the political and the social dimension. Radically transformed by the phenomenon of globalisation (Megale, 2015), legal translation faces the challenge of reconciling conflicting pressures. Expectations of fidelity and wholesale equivalence that have traditionally governed this field clash with the needs of contexts marked by cultural differences and unequal power relations between cultures; a seemingly renewed literalism brought about by an increased technologisation of the profession promotes sameness but also reinforces hegemony and subordination relations between translating and translated cultures. In this context, the perceived challenge of catering for diverging cultural identities in the legal field is progressively feeding the conviction that new translation formulae must be found for legal translation to promote social cohesion, cultural pluralism, and a more balanced equation between unity and diversity. At the level of research, a growing number of voices (Biel & Engberg, 2013, p. 1) have been arguing recently for comprehensive research models that are able to account for the many factors impinging on this social practice, i.e. for integrated approaches that may help circumvent the dangers of reductionism, for all theories enlarge certain horizons while creating blind spots elsewhere (Hermans, 1999, p. 151).