Guest Editor for Special Issue on 'Law in Translation'

In an era marked by processes of economic and political integration that are arguably unprecedented in their range and impact, the translation of law, whether understood in its literal or metaphorical sense, has assumed a significance that can hardly be overstated. The following situations are typical. As the expression of a strong postcolonial commitment, various African states have decided to draft their legislation in more than one official language with a view to conferring equal authority to colonial and traditional languages. Elsewhere, an influential group of European lawyers is seeking to develop a civil code for the European Union that stands to be translated in 23 languages. Meanwhile, former political and military leaders are being prosecuted for genocide before the International Criminal Court, a body consisting of judges from many different legal backgrounds and operating according to a complex multilingual procedure. Controversially, the US Supreme Court has relied upon foreign law in order to assess the constitutionality of a Texas statute criminalizing certain forms of sexual behaviour. Each of these instances raises the matter of law in translation. Can legal rules carry identical normative implications in more than one language? Can law achieve uniformity despite requiring to be rendered in many languages? How do interpreting and translation affect adjudication in a multilingual courtroom? To what extent can a given legal text make sense in a different legal culture? These questions raise only some of the difficult issues that confront lawyers and translators currently acting across national borders. This special issue of The Translator features a number of critical, innovative and interdisciplinary contributions drawing on fields such as translation studies, linguistics, literary theory, sociology, philosophy and postcolonial studies which probe the interface between law, language and translation, with specific reference to the transnational situation as it is currently unfolding.