The Decalogue of Legal Translation – Contracts in Intercultural Legal Communication

Abstract

The paper proposes a model for translating contracts which unites different translation stances (Snell Hornby’s integrated approach, the functionalist views with the skopos theory and the concept of cultureme, as well as Chesterman’s theory of memes) with the findings of comparative law regarding differences between legal systems and their impact on legal languages. The model is structured in ten stages, each addressing one of the specific linguistic and extra-linguistic aspects of the contract as a text type. When translating contracts, a very specific situation may arise with respect to the cultural embeddedness of the target text, since memes of different legal cultures may co-exist at various levels. This is especially the case when the contracting parties decide to use a third language as a lingua franca, which may lack any direct correlation with the legal culture(s) underlying the contract.