Research Methods in Legal Translation and Interpreting: Crossing Methodological Boundaries (Law, Language and Communication)

The field of Legal translation and interpreting has strongly expanded over recent years. As it has developed into an independent branch of Translation Studies, this book advocates for a substantiated discussion of methods and methodology, as well as knowledge about the variety of approaches actually applied in the field. It is argued that, complex and multifaceted as it is, legal translation calls for research that might cross boundaries across research approaches and disciplines in order to shed light on the many facets of this social practice. The volume addresses the challenge of methodological consolidation, triangulation and refinement. The work presents examples of the variety of theoretical approaches which have been developed in the discipline and of the methodological sophistication which is currently being called for. In this regard, by combining different perspectives, they expand our understanding of the roles played by legal translators and interpreters, who emerge as linguistic and intercultural mediators dealing with a rich variety of legal texts; as knowledge communicators and as builders of specialised knowledge; as social agents performing a socially-situated activity; as decision-makers and agents subject to and redefining power relations, and as political actors shaping legal cultures and negotiating cultural identities, as well as their own professional identity.

Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Łucja Biel is Associate Professor and Head of Corpus Research Centre at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland, where she teaches and researches legal translation. She is Secretary General of the European Society of Translation Studies (EST) and deputy editor of the Journal of Specialised Translation . She has participated in a number of internationally and nationally funded research projects on legal and institutional translation. Her research interests focus on legal/EU translation, legal terminology, translator training

and corpus linguistics. She has published over 50 papers in this area, e.g. in The Translator, Meta. The Translators’ Journal, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Fachsprache, LANS-TTS and a book Lost in the Eurofog. The Textual Fit of Translated Law (Peter Lang, 2014).

Jan Engberg, PhD is Professor of Knowledge Communication at the School of

Communication and Culture, University of Aarhus, Denmark. He teaches legal

as well as fi nancial translation at BA and MA level, as well as other branches of

text oriented foreign language skills. His main areas of research interest are the

study of translation and mediation of knowledge in the fi eld of law, texts and

genres in the academic fi eld, cognitive aspects of domain-specifi c discourse and

the relations between specialised knowledge and text formulation as well as basic

aspects of communication in domain-specifi c settings. His research focus is upon

communication and translation in the fi eld of law. He is editor-in-chief of the

international journal Fachsprache and member of the editorial or advisory boards

of a substantial number of international scholarly journals.

M. Rosario Martín Ruano is Associate Professor at the University of

Salamanca, Spain, where she is a member of the Research Group on Translation,

Ideology and Culture and where she currently leads the research project

entitled VIOSIMTRAD (‘Symbolic Violence and Translation: Challenges

in the Representation of Fragmented Identities within the Global Society’,

FFI2015–66516-P; MINECO/FEDER, UE). Her research interests include

legal and institutional translation, translation and ideology, and gender and postcolonial

approaches to translation. She has published widely on these issues,

including a number of books and co-edited collective volumes, as well as more

than 50 chapters and articles in journals such as The Interpreter and Translator

Trainer (ITT), TTR, JosTRans, Linguistica Antverpiensia , etc. and in volumes

by Routledge, Multilingual Matters, John Benjamins, St Jerome, etc. She is a

member of the editorial board of Perspectives, Estudios de Traducción, Clina and a

reviewer for a number of specialised journals ( Target, Meta, JosTRans, Language

and Intercultural Communication, MonTI , etc.). She has been a practising

translator since 1997.

Vilelmini Sosoni is Assistant Professor at the Ionian University, Greece. She

teaches legal and economic translation as well as other branches of specialised

translation. She has participated in a number of internationally and nationally

funded research projects on legal translation and translation technology. Her

research interests lie in the areas of legal and institutional translation, corpus

linguistics, intercultural communication and translation technology. She has

published widely on these topics, including articles in journals such as Perspectives,

Jostrans, mTm, Journal of Language and Law , etc. and in volumes by Routledge,

John Benjamins, Springer, etc. She is a member of the editorial board of Jostrans

and Intercultural and Intersemiotic Translation . She has been a practising

translator since 1997.