A critical account of the concept of ‘basic legal knowledge’: theory and practice

Abstract

Subject knowledge is, according to most definitions, one of the basic components of legal translation competence. There is widespread agreement that legal translators must have some basic knowledge of the legal systems involved in order to perform satisfactorily. Nevertheless, no concrete proposals have been put forward and no real consensus can be observed with regard to the elements which should be covered by the notion of ‘basic legal knowledge’. In this study, a critical account of this concept is provided through the examination of the undergraduate modules on legal translation taught at Spanish universities, focusing on the legal topics covered as well as the materials included in these modules. The aim of this review is to shed some light on how this concept is incorporated into the teaching of legal translation, in order to identify, by means of a bottom-up approach, which components are considered most central to the blanket notion of ‘basic legal knowledge’.

Keywords:

• legal translation
• translation competence
• basic legal knowledge
• undergraduate translator training
• module design

Notes

1. This may be due to the wide variety of topics and subareas of law and to the different approaches adopted in modules on legal translation, depending on the specific needs, different language combinations, specificity of the study programme, etc.

2. This study focuses on undergraduate programmes, as they are more representative of legal translation teaching than the small number of masters courses in legal translation.

3. Modules on legal translation into English offered at the University of Granada and Alfonso X University are included in this number, even though students taking these modules have already had an initial contact with the area through a module on legal translation into Spanish, as a change in the directionality is likely to involve a different approach regarding the theoretical aspects.

4. The percentages in this and subsequent pie charts differ from those given within the text because there is no one-to-one correspondence between modules and areas/topics; the figures within the text provide the proportion of modules containing a specific area/topic, whereas the figures in the pie chart illustrate the relative proportion of areas/topics, of which each module can (and usually does) contain more than one.

5. It has not been possible to access the description of the introductory module on Law and Economy at the University of Salamanca.

6. Items that cover only the particular concepts involved in analysis of one particular legal area, genre or document are not included in this number.

7. The fact that the content of individual modules varies does not necessarily imply that the global vision of basic legal knowledge is fundamentally different.