Translation of the Church legal texts – practical aspect

Abstract

“Translatability” is a quality of certain texts. It is essential that they be translated. The aim of the article is to present some practical issues of the process of translation to help a translator to make good use of the feature of the text of law in question. The paper consists of four parts. The first one deals with the lexical aspect of a text of law. The next one enumerates and briefly describes minor problems that may occur during translation such as: format of date, abbreviations and text editing. In the third point of the article the rules that may be of help in selecting the best version of translation are presented. The first rule comes from the normative nature of law and the second one from the rules that govern process of interpretation. The last essential part discuses the necessity of evaluation of the outcome of the process of translation which should be done by the users of law. Translation is a very complex process especially when one considers that most of texts of canon law are written in Latin and the fact that the target languages are numerous and so different. Hopefully some practical aspects of translation presented in the article can be of help in fulfilling such a demanding task.