Translatability Potential of Legal Discourse Viewed from the Philosophical Perspective

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to introduce the notion of translatability potential, which can be viewed from the philosophical perspective, as it aligns with the problem of untranslatability raised by several philosophers who referred to translation in general in their works. For instance, Hadamer, Heidegger, Derrida used to speak and meditate the mentioned issue in their works, they were concerned with the potential possibility to express ideas in another language, transfer them to other cultures, and placing them in a new language environment. The paper considers this problem from the point of a legal discourse translation field, as it is a complicated system including multiple aspects presenting challenges for translators, which in the process of translation determines the correlation between the object and the subject. Translatability potential is suggested as a starting point to identify if a text or a linguistic unit is possible to render using another language. The paper also studies how much the interpretation of the source of a legal text affects the fulfillment of its translatability potential.

Keywords

• translatability
• potential
• legal discourse
• philosophical perspective

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