Legal Translator as a Communicator

Abstract

Legal Translation in Context. Professional Issues and Prospects, edited by Anabel Borja Albi from Jaume I University (Spain) and Fernando Prieto Ramos from the University of Geneva, both practising sworn translators, offers an insightful overview of professional practices in the public and private sectors. As such, the book falls within the emerging track of research in Translation Studies, namely— workplace studies, and is a valuable contribution to the field. The book is a fruit of a two-year international project run at the University of Geneva’s Faculty of Translation and Interpreting. Although, due to the growing autonomy of the field of Legal Translation Studies and intense research activity, there are increasingly more publications on legal translation, this book stands out because it approaches legal translation from the perspective of translators and their employers (and/or commissioners of translation assignments) rather than from the usual perspective of the product of their work—a source or target text. Moreover, given the growing interest in legal translators’ work under the EU directive on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings (2010/64/EU), this collection of papers could not be better timed with its overview of qualifications, on-the-job training and quality assurance procedures in various institutional and noninstitutional settings. The book comprises an introduction on the state of affairs in legal translation and 14 papers organized into three parts: (1) Legal translation in the private sector, (2) Legal translation for national public institutions, and (3) Legal translation at international organizations. A few papers are co-authored to enable a comparative overview of practices.