The impact of European legal acts on national legal terminology and on German as a minority language in South Tyrol, Italy

Abstract

Legal concepts are generally deeply rooted in a specific legal system. Even when two legal systems use the same official language, such as Germany and Austria, the system-boundness of their legal concepts may lead to communication problems. German is also an officially recognised minority language in South Tyrol, Italy. In South Tyrol, the local public authorities must use the minority language in their relations with German-speaking citizens. This brought about the need to elaborate a local German legal terminology to express Italian legal concepts. Terminology development efforts intended to promote terminology consistency and avoid an excessive regionalisation of South Tyrolean German, so as to foster communication with the neighbouring German-speaking legal systems. In the last decades, European Union law has led to a growing harmonisation in the legal terminologies of its Member States, facilitating communication between the different legal systems, also with benefits for terminology work in South Tyrol. This paper focuses on how European legal acts impact on national legal terminology and affect German legal terminology in South Tyrol. The considerations set out are based on comparative legal terminology work regarding the Italian and the German-speaking legal systems done at Eurac Research.