A legal translator or a lawyer-translator? Reflections on the relationship between the concepts of ‘legal translator’ and ‘lawyer’ in the context of the so-called legal thinking
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/RP.2023.004Keywords
lawyer, legal translator, legal thinking, translator’s thinking, legal translatioAbstract
Since legal translation occurs at the levels of both legal languages and legal systems, one could ask whether legal translators should themselves be lawyers, or whether lawyers automatically make legal translators. While these issues have already been addressed in legal translation studies, it is worth taking a closer look at what the word ‘lawyer’ actually means, and what qualities of lawyers - potentially useful for legal translators - underlie the above questions. Hence, this paper seeks to investi- gate the relationship between the concepts of ‘legal translator’ and ‘lawyer’, and to establish what characteristics attributed to lawyers are relevant for legal translators. A hypothesis has been put forward that one of such qualities is the so-called legal thinking. In order to achieve the above goal, the author first reviews various claims on the professional identity of legal translators and then analyses the meaning of the word ‘lawyer’. This is followed by a discussion of the notion of legal thinking and a reflection on whether it would be possible to refer to a way of thinking peculiar to translators. Next, legal thinking is juxtaposed with models of legal translator competence in search of common areas. In the concluding remarks, the author discusses difficulties in defining the relationship between the concepts of ‘lawyer’ and ‘legal translator’, while emphasising that translation should primarily be seen as a self-contained profession. At the same time, legal thinking is pointed out as an ability that can add value to a legal translator’s performance. It is also suggested that rather than comparing or contrasting the concepts of ‘lawyer’ and ‘legal translator’, it might be more accurate to refer to a complex architecture of a legal translator’s mind, which metaphorically points to the interplay of translational, legal, legal linguistic and comparative law structures.
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