Legal translation in a postcolonial setting: the political implications of translating Cypriot legislation into Greek
The Translator, (2014)Abstract
Cyprus presents some noteworthy particularities in relation to both the policy followed by Cypriot Courts of Law and the translation of the country’s legislation from English into Standard Modern Greek (SMG). SMG is the statutory variety that has been adopted in all public domains since 1960 (independence from British rule). However, the use of English in the Cypriot courts was prolonged for longer than two decades. Moreover, the translation of the legislation into SMG also displays some particularities which are interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view. Specifically, the translated texts contain terminology which in many cases is different from the standard terminology used in Greek law texts, even in cases where there is no ‘obvious’ necessity for differentiation. Most of these cases are calques of the corresponding English terms. This paper will attempt to present the motives behind these practices by highlighting their political dimension. It will be argued that (1) the preservation of a code other than the statutory one and (2) the translation of legislation with extensive differentiations from the standardised variety might share the ideological motive of creating a linguistic apparatus in support of state (as opposed to ethnic) identity.