The Challenge of Translation

Every comparative legal study inevitably requires an act of translation. Indeed, the role of the comparatist is to explain, by making use of her language, a foreign law generally formulated in a different language. She is frequently asked to translate all kinds of legal texts, including international treaties, statutes, judicial decisions, private legal agreements and legal scholarship, from one language into another. Consequently, it must be assumed that the task of the comparatist always already includes that of a translator. In this paper, I address what I regard to be the most important problems arising from translation in the context of comparative legal studies.