Law in Translation –  The Production of a Multilingual Jurisprudence by the Court of Justice of the European Union, by  Karen McAuliffe (University of Exeter)

on June 24,  3 PM  (Thursday)

at Campus Walferdange, Bâtiment VI, Salle 011

Law in Translation - The Court of Justice of the European Union produces a multilingual jurisprudence consisting of collegiate judgments drafted by jurists in a language that is generally not their mother tongue. It undergoes many permutations of translation into/out of 23 different languages, and thus is necessarily shaped by the particular way in which the Court works and by the actors within it. There are various difficulties associated with the production of that multilingual jurisprudence:because French is rarely the mother tongue of those drafting that case law, the texts produced are often stilted and awkward.  In addition, those drafting such case law are constrained in their use of language and style of writing (owing to pressures of technology and in order to reinforce the rule of law).  These factors have led to the development of a ‘Court French’ which necessarily shapes the case law produced and has implications for its development, particularly insofar as it inevitably leads to a type of precedent in that case law.  Furthermore, the lawyer-linguists at the Court, responsible for translating the jurisprudence into all of the official EU languages must reconcile differing notions of ‘law’ and ‘translation’ The results of their efforts and struggle to reconcile the two sets of norms (of translation and law) is a compromise, the existence of which is widely acknowledged and widely accepted within the small legal community of the Court. It is precisely because everyone in this community is aware of that compromise that it is actually able to function. However, to what extent can a wider understanding of the particular processes behind the production of the Court’s multilingual jurisprudence aid our understanding of the development of EU law?

Dr. Karen McAuliffe – is currently Lecturer in European Union Law at the University of Exeter’sCornwall campus.  She holds the degrees of LLB (Hons) in Common and Civil Law with French (2000) and Ph.D (2006) from the Queen’s University of Belfast and has also studied at l’Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve) in Belgium as well as the Academy of European Public Law in Greece (where she received a Diploma in European Public Law, 2003).  Prior to undertaking her Ph.D studies she worked for the Court of Justice of the European Communities inLuxembourg.  She is currently involved in research in post-enlargement dynamics of law and language in European Union institutions and the relationship between language, law and translation in the EU legal order.

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