Mind the Gap! Translation of Foreign Law Is Not What You Think
| Autor | Pierre Legrand |
| Cargo | Professor of Law, École de Droit de la Sorbonne (Paris, France) |
| Páginas | 601-654 |
Licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons
Licensed under Creative Commons
Rev. Investig. Const., Curitiba, vol. 8, n. 3, p. 601-654, set./dez. 2021.
Revista de Investigações Constitucionais
ISSN 2359-5639
DOI: 10.5380/rinc.v8i3.83292
601
Mind the Gap!
Translation of Foreign Law Is Not What You Think
Mind the Gap!
Tradução de Direito estrangeiro não é o que você pensa
PIERRE LEGRAND I, *
I École de Droit de la Sorbonne (Paris, France)
pierre_legrand@orange.fr
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3945-183X
Recebido/Received: 05.06.2021 / 5 June 2021
Aprovado/Approved: 02.10.2021 / 2 October 2021
Como citar esse artigo/How to cite this article: LEGRAND, Pierre. Mind the Gap! Translation of Foreign Law Is Not What You Think.
Revista de Investigações Constitucionais/Journal of Constitutional Research, Curitiba, vol. 8, n. 3, p. 601-654, set.-dez./Sept.-
Dec. 2021. DOI: 10.5380/rinc.v8i3.83292.
* Professor of Law, École de Droit de la Sorbonne (Paris, France). Visiting Professor, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (Chicago).
Visiting Professor, Escola de Direito, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (Curitiba). I research and teach comparative law.
Throughout this essay, I work from primary texts, and unless I indicate otherwise emphases belong to the authors I quote.
Translations are mine.
Abstract
While much legal research involves foreign law and much
of foreign law exists in a foreign language, the issue of
translation has attracted limited theoretical attention
only. In particular, few lawyers are aware of the work issu-
ing from elds like literary criticism, philosophy, or trans-
lation studies. Urging acknowledgment and redress of
such a serious epistemic decit, basing itself on a critical
approach to foreignness, this article oers a constructive
guide to the making of just translations. A noteworthy
feature of the argument concerns the formulation of
conclusions that can fairly be expected to run counter-in-
tuitively to a lawyer’s unexamined assumptions. Indeed,
much of what is received as conventional wisdom about
the translation of foreign law is either ill-considered or
plain wrong.
Keywords: comparative law; foreign law; critical theory;
translation; interpretation.
Resumo
Embora muitas pesquisas jurídicas envolvam Direito es-
trangeiro e grande parte do Direito estrangeiro exista em
um idioma estrangeiro, a questão da tradução atraiu ape-
nas uma atenção teorética limitada. Em particular, poucos
juristas estão cientes do trabalho proveniente de áreas
como crítica literária, losoa ou estudos de tradução.
Instando o reconhecimento e a correção de um décit epis-
têmico tão sério, baseando-se em uma abordagem crítica
da estrangeirice, este artigo oferece um guia construtivo
para a realização de traduções justas. Uma característica
digna de nota da argumentação refere-se à formulação
de conclusões das quais se pode razoavelmente esperar
que se manifestem de forma contra-intuitiva às suposições
não examinadas de um jurista. Na verdade, muito do que
é recebido como sabedoria convencional sobre a tradução
de Direito estrangeiro ou é irreetido ou totalmente errado.
Palavras-chave: Direito Comparado; Direito estrangeiro;
teoria crítica; tradução; interpretação.
PIERRE LEGRAND
Rev. Investig. Const., Curitiba, vol. 8, n. 3, p. 601-654, set./dez. 2021.
602
“Said is missaid”.
–Beckett1
“Peter [...] is not a translation of Pierre”.
–Derrida2
The central place of language in life seems undeniable. We use language to command,
to claim, to philosophize, to plead, and to praise. We use it in poetry, obituaries, and
actuarial reports. We use it directly or obliquely (“How are you” need not be a question
about health). We use it to confess, to testify. We use it constatively and performatively
(“I name this horse ‘Biscaïa’, and I name this other horse ‘Grégaou’”). We tell jokes and
attempt to convince. We talk to our spouses. We talk to ourselves. We commit to our
friends. We lie to our colleagues. And think how we read so many kinds of texts and
hear orations of such various sorts, all composed of words. But language’s signicance
holds even more primordially. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that “[o]nly where
[there is] language, there is world”,3 or, if you will, that “[n]o thing is where the word
lacks”.4 In other terms, language is the condition of possibility of all experience of world.
Only what one calls a mountain can exist as a mountain (“Oh! Look at the mountain
over there...”). And then, one can only see the mountain in words. In one’s head, one
says: “It is huge”; “It is beautiful”; “It is white”; “There is snow”. Without words, one is
unable to see the mountain. Language therefore constitutes what one experiences in
one’s world. Consider a hot bath. What is a hot bath? It is what one calls a hot bath, what
one so designates. It is not that the hot bath exists as such in advance of ascription of
meaning on one’s part. Rather, one’s words constitute the bath as hot (“Oh! It is hot...”).
Indeed, “[i]t is the world of words that creates the world of things”.5 So Samuel Beckett,
percipiently: “What can you say, words it is, nothing else going”.6
1 BECKETT, S. Worstward Ho. In: Company/Ill Seen Ill Said/Worstward Ho/Stirrings Still. D. Van Hulle (ed.).
London: Faber & Faber, 2009 [1983]. p. 97.
2 DERRIDA, J. Psyché. vol. 1. 2nd edn. Paris: Galilée, 1998. p. 209 [“Peter (…) n’est pas une traduction de
Pierre”].
3 HEIDEGGER, M. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. F.-W. von Herrmann (ed.). Frankfurt: Klostermann,
2012 [1971]. p. 38 [“Nur wo Sprache, da ist Welt”].
4 HEIDEGGER, M. Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske, 1959. p. 163 [“Kein Ding ist, wo das Wort
gebricht”].
5 LACAN, J. Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse. In: Ecrits. Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1966 [1953]. p. 276 [“C’est le monde des mots qui crée le monde des choses”].
6 The quotation is an answer Beckett gave Niklaus Gessner, his interviewer. For the transcript, revealing that
Beckett spoke in French, see GESSNER, N. Die Unzulänglichkeit der Sprache. Zürich: Juris, 1957. p. 75 [“Que
voulez-vous, Monsieur, c’est les mots, on n’a rien d’autre”].
Mind the Gap! Translation of Foreign Law Is Not What You Think
Rev. Investig. Const., Curitiba, vol. 8, n. 3, p. 601-654, set./dez. 2021. 603
Now, each language constitutes its world dierently from the way in which
each other language constitutes its own world so that there are at least as many
worlds as there are languages. To reprise José Ortega y Gasset’s famous example,
the semantic extension of the Spanish language’s “bosque” diers from that of the
German language’s “Wald”,7 and while English features words like “wood”, “timber”, and
“woods” (as in “a walk in the woods”), French has “bois” only.8 To press the dierential
point further, contemplate three Spanish sentences: “Quiero a mi mujer”, “Me gusta
vino”, and “Yo amo el fado”. The Spanish verbs “querer”, “gustar”, and “amar” all translate
into French as “aimer” (“J’aime ma femme”, “J’aime le vin”, and “J’aime le fado”). In sum,
“language manifests itself in reality only as a multiplicity”,9 and “in every language
there lies a characteristic world-view”,10 which is why a situation being described with a
verb in the future perfect in French can well feature a modal verb expressing necessity
in English – thus “Il aura oublié son rendez-vous” becomes “He must have forgotten
his appointment”. And the French “rendez-vous” is masculine, a gender assignment
that makes no sense in English.11 (Surely, the fact that the French for “masculinity” is
feminine – it is “la masculinité” – does not make much sense either.) Meanwhile, the
German language, which also ascribes gender identities, has “moon” in the masculine
(“der Mond”) and “sun” in the feminine (“die Sonne”), French claiming precisely the
opposite (“la lune” and “le soleil”). Also, German allows for neutral terms in addition
to masculine and feminine ones, an option unknown to French. “Pig”, for example, is
neutral in German (“das Schwein”), although it is masculine in French (“le cochon”).
Still along dierentiating lines, envisage how “La Belle au bois dormant” and
“Sleeping Beauty” have long reexively been deemed interchangeable expressions. Yet,
where is the forestal allusion in English? And “Little Red Riding Hood” is evidently “Le
Petit chaperon rouge”, Charles Perrault’s 1697 story. But why the evocation of movement
and travel on horseback in English (the reference is to the cloak that would be worn by
riding women as an enveloping garment)? For its part, like the French version, Jacob
7 ORTEGA Y GASSET, J. Miseria y esplendor de la traducción. In: Obras completas. vol. 5. 2nd edn. Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, 1994 [1946]. p. 436.
8 For this illustration, see ECO, U. Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Milano: Bompiani 2003. p. 40.
9 HUMBOLDT, W. von. Über die Verschiedenheiten des menschlichen Sprachbaues. In: Gesammelte
Schriften. vol. 6/1, A. Leitzmann (ed.). Berlin: Behr, 1907 [1829]. p. 240 [“(d)ie Sprache erscheint in der
Wirklichkeit nur als ein Vielfaches”]. This text is Humboldt’s so-called “Kawi-Werk”, a monumental study of the
Kavi language on the island of Java, which remained incomplete at the time of the author’s death in 1835.
10 HUMBOLDT, W. von. Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einuß auf
die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts. In: Gesammelte Schriften. vol. 7/1, A. Leitzmann (ed.).
Berlin: Behr, 1907 [1836†]. p. 60 [“in jeder Sprache (liegt) eine eigenthümliche Weltansicht”]. This publication,
which came to stand as Humboldt’s most famous writing, appeared shortly after the author’s death. It is an
edited and substantially abbreviated version of Humboldt (note 9).
11 Cf. SEDARIS, D. Me Talk Pretty One Day. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000. p. 188: “Of all the stumbling blocks
inherent in learning [French], the greatest for me is the principle that each noun has a corresponding sex that
aects both its articles and its adjectives”.
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