Can Corpus Consultation Compensate for the Lack of Knowledge in Legal Translation Training?

Abstract

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor’s students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

Keywords

• offline corpora
• translation training
• legal translations
• corpus-based translations
• diy corpora