Abstract for “Tools and Legal Resources for Translating into Catalan: From the Type of Resources to the Needs of their Users”

Ona Domènech, Open University of Catalonia (UOC)

The Catalan language, as a minoritized language that has been undergoing a process of corpus and status planning for many years now, has a great number of useful tools and resources for legal translation. These resources are usually described using different criteria essentially based on the more extended textual typologies. Although the importance of current classifications of tools and resources cannot be denied, we argue that these allow to only partially assess their utility in any given translation situation, because they do not relate the type of resource to specific translation needs.

The criteria used to classify the tools and resources that might be useful for translating are usually based on formal typologies, and for the most part classifications take into account the textual type of the resource – they identify categories such as dictionaries and other lexical resources, databases, corpora, linguistic resources or questionnaires, among others. They are useful in identifying the available types of resources, to evaluate the array of existing resources for a particular domain and, as a result, to identify any existing typology gaps. Therefore, the relevance of describing the existing types of resources for legal translation cannot be denied. It is argued, however, that there is a need to complete these resources with an evaluation of their utility from the point of view of their users.

The needs of the users of jurilinguist resources can be explained in different ways. In the context of minoritised languages, translation competence stands out as a practical approach. Many well-known proposals focus on translation competence, but only a few are specifically related to translation competence in legal translation. The analysis of these reveals a common concern to link the needs of users with the tools and resources that may solve them.

This communication aims to evaluate the utility of the existing types of jurilinguist resources according to the legal translation needs that they address (and not only according to their defining typology features). The paper reviews existing typologies of tools and resources that are useful for legal translators and the main contributions in the analysis of legal translation competence, identifying therein the main types of translation needs. An updated repertoire of useful tools and resources for legal translating into Catalan is introduced and the sub-competences of the translation competence are compared with the instructions contained in the existing tools and resources.

The analysis conducted allows to map the tools and resources from the perspective of translation competence and it offers an overview of existing resources for legal translation into Catalan, which shows significant gaps in relation to certain sub-competences.

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