ELUSIVENESS AND AMBIGUITY: THE PARADOX OF LEGAL TRANSLATION

Among other related issues, the unquestionable role of English as a dominant world language has led to a wider and growing demand for specialized translation as well as a competence in what are commonly referred to as ‘other Englishes’. This trend towards specialization affects Translation Studies and Translation practice particularly.Similarly to what happens in every translation process, the very first step is understanding the source text fully, and in the case of legal texts this proves particularly demanding. A thorough reading and understanding of the text, an attempt to express the whole content in linguistically equivalent terms and, - other things being equal- the strain to respect the ‘naturalness’ of TL makes legal translation a really challenging job.The natural pursue of equivalence becomes highly problematic in legal translation due to several factors, both linguistic and non-linguistic. Among the linguistic ones surprising elusiveness and ambiguity characterize legal texts, whereas cultural issues related to the different backgrounds that generated laws and codes are among the non-linguistic ones. Drawing from legal realia both in English and Italian, in this paper I will try to understand to what extent elusiveness and ambiguity make translators’ choices particularly daring and how problematic the cultural issue is with reference to the target audience and in relation to Skopostheorie. Starting from a description of English as a dominant language and of its relation to globalization and the weakening of boundaries, I will proceed to describe legal language within the wider framework of ESPs. This will lead to discuss ESP and legal translation with their complexity and problems. I will then move on to analyse legal translation in relation to ambiguity and vagueness and how its vagueness and ambiguity is dealt with in a real situation, namely a trial.