Teaching law through translation or teaching how to translate legal texts: a didactic proposal for French-Spanish legal translation

Abstract

Most syllabuses for undergraduate degrees in Translation and Interpreting at Spanish universities include subjects that, to a greater or lesser extent, deal with the translation of legal texts. However, as is the case with other areas of specialisation in the field of translation and interpreting, there are usually no specific subjects aimed at developing thematic competence in these specific fields. As a result, students generally approach the translation of legal texts with an almost complete lack of knowledge of the law.

Even if there are previous studies that address some aspects related to legal translation training in general (Monzó Nebot, 2008; Prieto Ramos, 2009; Cao, 2014; Soriano Barabino, 2018, 2020a, 2020b; Way, 2000, 2016) or to the acquisition and development of thematic competence in the area and the linguistic combination addressed at in this paper (Barceló Martínez and Delgado Pugés, 2017a; Soriano Barabino, 2013; Valderrey Reñones, 2003, 2004, 2017), our aim is to suggest a didactic proposal for students of Translation and Interpreting degrees to start acquiring the necessary thematic competence to translate legal texts through activities that are not necessarily "translation-related", as well as through the analysis and comprehension of texts pertaining to a specific legal procedure and within the scope of subjects focused on legal translation (which often do not have a large number of credits). To this end, we will focus on a specific field, that of inheritance law. The proposal may be extrapolated to other fields and language combinations.