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Terminological equivalence in European, British and Italian criminal law texts: A case study on victims of crime
Peruzzo, Katia
2012
Abstract
Since the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, cooperation in the fields of
justice and home affairs has become a matter of high priority for all Member States of
the European Union. This cooperation finds its concrete expression in a number of im -
portant legal instruments adopted by EU institutions, which are already, or are currently
being, implemented in the Member States. EU legal instruments represent sources of law
used to approximate the laws and regulations of the Member States. However, the EU’s
intervention in different legal subfields cannot prevent differences from being identified
among the legal systems involved (EU’s supranational and Member States’ national
legal systems). A terminological analysis of an English-Italian corpus of EU texts dealing
with the legal subfield of the standing of victims in criminal proceedings and their rights
allows the identification of differences in the Italian and British implementation
strategies and in their way of conceptualising even relevant key elements such as
“victim”. This paper, which is part of an ongoing PhD research project, illustrates the
main characteristics of bilingual legal terminology in a multi-judicial framework
(conceptual asymmetries, different degrees of equivalence, synonymy and polysemy) and
presents the current research work by showing a few examples of legal/cultural gaps,
which necessarily need to be taken into account when translating or mediating between
the two cultures/languages.
Series
Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione
14
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Katia Peruzzo, Terminological equivalence in European, British and Italian criminal law texts: A case study on victims of crime, in: “Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione”, 14 (2012), pp. 159-170
Languages
en
File(s)