Legal culture: Cultural transfer (II)

Law, language, and culture are the key elements that shape the communicative framework of legal interactions. All actors are involved in legal interactions, from judges to translators, acknowledge the importance of how these three systems work together and relate to each other. Legal culture is the term that refers to how  all the legal actors relate to each other in different cultures.

How is legal culture important?

We know law and jurisdiction are in paper the corner stones of how legal relationships take place. So without a deep awareness of the legal culture we may find ourselves with a lot of wasted time. If we think of legal interactions as streams, legal culture would be the bed stream since in there we may find the historical jurisprudence of the legal culture or cultures we are dealing with. As well as how changes in law, language, and culture have interacted historically with these elements. The feature of the legal culture will affect the legal interactions at stake, but the degree to which the interaction is affected will also be very dependent on the specific culture. Many times, Western legal culture is compared with Chinese legal culture to show how big differences can be.

We know that language and culture are closely interrelated and we can’t imagine one without the other, and the same goes for legal language and legal culture, thus a deep knowledge of legal culture is a key for translators and interpreters. A fluid communication between legal jurisdiction could never be truly successful, cultural transfer would be impossible without a broad knowledge of this reality. At DTS we are well aware of the important role legal culture plays in legal interactions, and that is why we rely on our expert translators to provide the most flexible and accurate legal linguistic services. For further information about DTS Legal services click here. And don’t hesitate to contact us here.

Jurisdiction

Cultural appropriateness