Transius conference on law, translation and culture, in Geneva, 24-17 June 2015.
Transius is the Centre for Legal and Institutional Translation Studies at the University of Geneva. The only one of its members I’ve heard of (which means nothing, as they specialize in a variety of languages) is Suzanne Balansat-Aebi, who wrote a paper (2007) Probleme beim Übersetzen englischer Vertragstexte (PDF) which is rather good. I see she actually translates, which cannot be said of all those who write about the theory of legal translation. With these conferences, you have to be careful to distinguish between language in the EU (all languages of legislation regarded as originals, not translations; some legislation drafted by non-native non-lawyers), in Canada (lots of FR>EN translation using terminology of its own) and other areas of legal translation.
Here’s the lowdown on the 2015 conference from the above link:
The 2015 conference will combine keynote lectures, parallel paper presentations, a poster session and several thematic roundtables, so that all participants, from high-level experts to translation trainees, can benefit from the exchange of experiences. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
problems and methods of legal translation in professional settings
terminological and lexicographical issues in legal translation
legal translation competence and professional profiles
sociological and deontological issues in legal translation
the use of corpora and computer tools for legal translation
the role of translation in multilingual lawmaking, law application and adjudication
interdisciplinarity of legal and institutional translation
economic and financial translation in institutional settings
scientific and technical translation in institutional settings
quality assurance and management practices in institutional settingsRoundtables with speakers from various organisations will focus on the last four topics.
Deontological issues? – sounds painful on the teeth. Some of us might have preferred ethical questions or dilemmas of professional practice.
Interdisciplinarity?- more franglais and spanglish to highlight the complementarity of interdisciplinary round tables (two words).
Thanks, Adrian. Helpful as ever!