Translating EU law: legal issues and multiple dynamics

Abstract

Multilingualism has been one of the founding principles and a daily practical concern for the EU since its origins. EU law currently applies to 27 countries and is available in 23 languages which all carry equal status. In practice, this is made possible by the use of translation and by the work of the DGT (Directorate-General for Translation), which provides the largest translation service in the world. However, from a legal point of view, all texts are deemed to be authentic and translation is a ‘means’ without ‘status’, whose existence is nowhere mentioned. The issue has received attention in the last two decades mostly from scholars, linguists and translators such as Correia, Kjær, Koskinen, Šarčević, Tosi and Wagner. Focusing exclusively on legal texts and on the pragmatics of norms, I intend to demonstrate that the equal authenticity given to all EU language versions and the multilingual practice of the Union are less contradictory than they seem. Attention is also shifted to some other matters and complexities, which are unique to the EU, e.g. the supranational nature of the EU law, a cultural and a legal identity in fieri and its variety of politics and goals.

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