Foreign Law in Translation: If Truth Be Told…

Law regularly calls for translation. But can a given translation disclose such normative purchase on the original text so as to warrant — and indeed require — identification as the ”true” translation of it? Drawing support both from Jacques Derrida — one of Continental philosophy’s most influential thinkers — and Willard Quine — one of analytic philosophy’s preeminent exponents —, we answer in the negative. As it builds on converging insights hailing from widely different philosophical horizons, our argument challenges the view that competence and commitment can ever ensure the exactness which lawyers assume they must encounter in the translated text.