Developing Translation Competence Within the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists in the Republic of Croatia

Abstract

Abstract. Translation competence includes a complex variety of cognitive, linguistic and cultural skills. Translation in the field of law represents an even more demanding process, as it can be defined as "an act of communication in the mechanism of law" which leads "to legal effects and may induce peace or a prompt war" (Šarčević, 1997). In this paper, different aspects of the translator's competence in legal translation are discussed. In the introductory part, an overview of theoretical approaches to the translation process is offered. The main part of the paper is dedicated to problems and challenges that legal translators are faced with. Special attention is paid to teaching the documentary approach to translation of EU legislation within the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists in the Republic of Croatia. The problems occurring in legal translation and competences of legal translators are discussed from the teacher's perspective, based on the experience in teaching the course Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Terminology within the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law, University of Osijek, Croatia.

Interpreters And Translators' Extra-Linguistic Competence Development

“…The competence will progress successfully if it is developed by students consciously throughout their lives. Some universities do offer special Lifelong Learning Programmes (Kordić, 2016). But it is almost impossible to cultivate the competence only at university: professors cannot teach everything a translator or interpreter should know to succeed in cross-cultural communication in four or two years.…”

A New Paradigm in Croatian Higher Education: Non – Formal Foreign Language Learning

“…By this specific HBO documentary, the problems and challenges of translating legal texts from English into Croatian and vice versa can be well illustrated. As the translation problems in the language of law have been explored by the author of this paper in several previous publications, the plan was to present the most interesting findings from her scholarly research concerning differences in legal concepts and terms in different legal systems (Kordić, 2015(Kordić, , 2016 within this course as well. The intention was also to put special emphasis on the examples of relative equivalence of legal terms (Sandrini, 1999) in the English and the Croatian languages of law as two languages stemming from different legal traditions and cultures.…”

“…The programmes were organized by the Department of Foreign Languages of the Faculty. As the author has already presented the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer Linguists and the methodological approach to its delivery in detail in previous publications (Kordić: 2015a;2016), the Programme will be shortly presented here only as an illustration of the specific type of non-formal education at the tertiary level.…”

Competencias para la traducción jurídica: modelos, enfoques y percepción del profesorado

“…Tal afirmación, en palabras de Scarpa y Orlando, entra en contradicción directa con la formación a medida que propone Prieto para los traductores jurídicos (2011: 19) o la afirmación de Šarčević (1997: 91) de que el traductor jurídico debe abstenerse de interpretar el texto en el sentido jurídico de la palabra. Kordić (2016), en el contexto croata, y en concreto en el del desarrollo de programas de formación continua para traductores jurídicos, propone un modelo multicompetencial que recurre, al igual que Piecychna arriba, a la hermenéutica y a la capacidad de interpretar textos jurídicos por parte del traductor. Además, el modelo utiliza las expresiones "traductor jurídico" y "jurista-lingüista" de forma intercambiable, lo que, de nuevo, vuelve a desdibujar la frontera entre dos profesiones que, pese a ser similares hasta cierto punto, difieren en un aspecto vital que marca las necesidades principales en los programas de formación y enseñanza específicos para traductores jurídicos: el conocimiento del derecho.…”