Teaching and learning legal translation

Abstract

Legal translation has been in great demand in the last decade around the world owing to globalization and increased contact and exchange between peoples and states. Naturally, there has been an increased need for legal translators for various purposes, but there has been little research on legal translator training. It is a fact that translating law between any languages is not a straightforward affair. It is commonly acknowledged that legal translation is complex, and it requires special skills, knowledge, and experience on the part of the translator to produce such translation. This essay focuses on legal translation education and the key aspects of the teaching and learning of legal translation. It discusses and defines the key aspects in legal translator training, mapping out the parameters of this new field of translation practice and research. The essay highlights the development of legal translator competence as the core objective of such training programs by identifying and describing the skill base of the legal translator and legal translation competence and proficiency. The author hopes that the discussion will draw more attention to this emerging area of curriculum development and educational research in translation studies.