Global Law as Translated Text: Mapping Institutional Legal Translation

Abstract

As international organizations rely on translation to produce and enforce legal instruments in multiple languages, global law can be regarded as a network of translated texts. To shed light on the multilingual dimension of international and supranational law, this study presents an interdisciplinary mapping of legal genres in three representative settings: the UN, the WTO, the EU, and their respective adjudicative bodies. Genres are classified under three text typologies corresponding to three categories of legal procedures and text production: law-making, compliance monitoring and adjudication. The resulting taxonomies and their legal contextualization reveal important commonalities as regards the interconnection between legal text-types and functions, as well as differences that reflect the nature of each institutional legal system, including variations in the level of multilingualism. This mapping is considered a condition for further investigations into the scope and features of institutional legal translation, with the ultimate aim of improving its quality.