Interpreting Multilingual Legislation

Abstract

This chapter discusses the intricacies of interpreting multilingual legal texts. Multiplicity of legal languages potentially amplifies linguistic indeterminacy, which in turn contributes to legal indeterminacy. It would be a nightmare for a bilingual or multilingual jurisdiction if the application of two or more language versions of the law to the same case leads to two or more different legal outcomes. Such legal indeterminacy could give rise to chaos. Indeed, these nightmares have periodically haunted bilingual and multilingual jurisdictions. Established rules of legal interpretation, having been derived with the assumption that there is only one official text of the law, are not always helpful in resolving interpretation problems in a multilingual jurisdiction. In multilingual jurisdictions, the authority of the law is shifted away from the text that represents it. The cost of linguistic inclusivity is that each constituent group of a multilingual jurisdiction has to surrender predictability of legal outcome derivable from a single version of the law.