Translation Theories Applicable to Legislative Documents

Abstract

The age of globalization is also affecting the field of translation. Stereotypical expressions are
increasingly used, especially when dealing with legal discourse. Thus, the task of the translator is merely to
convey the message in the most comprehensible way for the reader. This paper attempts to present the
difficulties in achieving the same legal effect when translating EU legislation from English to Romanian. The
first part discusses some theoretical perspectives on legal translation trying to determine the best way of
translating a legal text. The second part of my paper will be based on a comparative analysis of two translated
EU directives, in terms of structure, vocabulary and syntax. The corpus of my study is based on translations of
official EU documents from English to Romanian.