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Background

The United States has no official language and has Federal Law based off the Constitution and derived from the English System. Most of the Law in the United States is written in English, since most people in the United States speak English. However, there are bound to be people that do not speak English and need to understand how the law applied to them. Thus, the law needs to be translated into different languages now and again for situations such as someone who does not understand English.

However, in the process of translation, small things like punctuation and order of clauses can drastically change how the force of law operates. For example, he part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that got struck down was influenced by a specific interpretation of an ambiguous semicolon:

The Supreme Court shall have [original] jurisdiction over all cases of a civil nature where a state is a party, ... And shall have exclusively all such jurisdiction of suits or proceedings against ambassadors, or other public ministers, .... And the trial of issues in fact ... shall be by jury. The Supreme Court shall also have appellate jurisdiction from the circuit courts and courts of the several states, in the cases herein after specially provided for; and shall have power to issue ... writs of mandamus, in cases warranted by the principles and usages of law, to any courts appointed, or persons holding office, under the authority of the United States.

— Judiciary Act of 1789, Section 13

Question

Given the real ramifications of potentially erroneous punctuation, and the inevitability that laws will need to be translated, who ensures that the translation of a law does not change its meaning?

Community
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isakbob
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3 Answers3

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The question largely does not come up in the US, but it does in some officially bilingual jurisdictions such as Canada. If someone ventures to paraphrase law of the US into Farsi or Spanish, that could be a kind act on their part, but it has no official status: only the law as enacted has legal weight. Though India is officially multilingual in many ways, acts of parliament must be in English – the English version is authoritative, even though translations may be made.

In Canada, both English and French versions are official; so in the case of R. v. Collins, [1987] 1 SCR 265, a conflict is detected:

The French version of the text, which translates could bring the administration of justice into disrepute, is less onerous than the more stringent English version, "would bring the administration of justice into disrepute", and consequently is preferable in that it better protects the right to a fair trial

(invoking a separate principle of interpretation, lenity, in case of ambiguity).

There is some indication that EU directives can be translated after the fact, so that the 1979 Wild Birds Directive was translated from English into Slovak some years later. In the case of the EU, the Directorate-General for Translation shoulders that responsibility.

user6726
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While the original question is about U.S. Law, conventions on international treaties (which are often drafted in multiple languages) are informative as to how this question is dealt with in other contexts.

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is a UN convention on international treaties. Article 33 discusses (briefly) how treaties with multiple versions in multiple languages should be interpreted:

  1. When a treaty has been authenticated in two or more languages, the text is equally authoritative in each language, unless the treaty provides or the parties agree that, in case of divergence, a particular text shall prevail.
  2. A version of the treaty in a language other than one of those in which the text was authenticated shall be considered an authentic text only if the treaty so provides or the parties so agree.
  3. The terms of the treaty are presumed to have the same meaning in each authentic text.
  4. Except where a particular text prevails in accordance with paragraph 1, when a comparison of the authentic texts discloses a difference of meaning which the application of articles 31 and 32 does not remove, the meaning which best reconciles the texts, having regard to the object and purpose of the treaty, shall be adopted.

So basically, treaties are "authenticated" in some languages, which are agreed to by the parties at the time of adoption; however, the parties can agree that a particular version has precedence over the others. Versions of the treaty in other languages will not be "authenticated" unless the parties agree. And if there is a discrepancy between authenticated versions, the discrepancy should be resolved "in regards to the object and purpose of the treaty".

As an example, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties itself is authenticated in five languages (see article 85):

The original of the present Convention, of which the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Michael Seifert
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Lawyers and courts.

Even in the United States, laws are written in a verbose and precise style of English that can almost be thought of as a separate language. ("Legalese" is only half a joke; the quote in your question wasn't about translating an English law into another language, but interpreting what the law actually meant in English!)

A lawyer, then, is in part an interpreter that translates Legalese into whatever language (English, Spanish, etc) their client requires.

Courts arbitrate disagreements when the translations used by two parties differ.

chepner
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