This book examines legal translation as a process through which legal meanings, institutions and forms of authority are created and contested.
Moving beyond approaches that treat translation as a technical transfer between languages, it explores translators as participants in legal meaning-making. Drawing on semiotics, phenomenology and legal theory, the book develops an account of legal translation as responsible sign-selection under conditions in which complete equivalence cannot be secured. The analysis covers legal signs, translator agency, discretion and ethics, as well as the historical case of W. A. P. Martin’s translation of Wheaton’s Elements of International Law. It shows how translated legal concepts acquire meaning through selection, circulation and institutional use. The book provides a framework for understanding how translators make judgements within linguistic, doctrinal and institutional constraints, and why these choices carry ethical consequences.
The book will appeal to scholars of translation studies, legal theory and semiotics.
