Legal Equivalence in International Agreements Case Study: Morocco-European Union Agreement Association

Abstract

This study is comparative, qualitative and exploratory in nature. It aims at exploring the types of equivalence and translation procedures used in legal translations. The representative data consists of three authentic versions of the Morocco-European Union Association Agreement. This study has started by providing a brief overview of the translation theories and schools of thought as well as the issue of equivalence in translation, important translation techniques and procedures often employed in the translation of law are presented, discussing each translation procedure and its applicability to legal translation, and then a succinct description of the Morocco-EU FTA Association. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the English, French and Arabic translations in relation to the translation procedures used by translators. Because this study is mainly descriptive, Gideon Toury‘s comparative analysis translation approach will be used. It consists of the identification of the source text, and then the mapping of target text’s segments on their counterparts in order to determine the relationships that link a target text to its source.