A memetic exploration of court interpretation

Abstract

Court interpretation subsumes transferring information from one source culture to the target culture, and the transfer of information, from the perspective of memetics, leads to the conceptualization of a common and significant framework in legal discourse, especially in the translation, interpretation and communication fields. This consideration gives the theoretical assumption for court interpretation, that is, court interpretation is a bilingual practice of meaning construction beyond meaning replication, because meaning units could be viewed as self-replicating complex ideas. Since the purpose of court interpretation is to find equivalence and the functions of court interpreters are being fair, semiotic equivalence can provide an even more useful tool for interpreters by offering greater insight into the mechanism of meaning and its encoding with the help of linguistic symbols. Meanwhile, court interpreters act as language and culture mediators to convey the correct contents of utterances and/or speech acts among their communities. Active and collaborative works are then necessary to mediate, decide, and analyze under real constraints with cultural challenges to elaborate viable interpretation solutions in laws.