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Translation as Metaphor

Robert Leckey, McGill University Faculty of Law, has published "Filiation and the Translation of Legal Concepts," in Legal Engineering and Comparative Law (volume 2)(Geneva: Schulthess, 2009). Here is the abstract.

The paper argues for the use of the metaphor of translation of legal concepts in comparative law by exploring recent reforms to the law of assisted reproduction by the legislature of Quebec. It argues that lawmakers and comparative lawyers may learn from the cautions advanced for literary and legal translators by the translation literature. It argues that the Quebec instance of legislated changes in order to facilitate assisted procreation by lesbian couples shows an excessive literalism in the translation of rules applicable to "natural" procreation to assisted procreation. The legislature might constructively have looked to other parts of the existing private law, as well as to sociological accounts of intentional lesbian reproduction. Translation-as-metaphor also speaks fruitfully to comparatists: it may alert them to the losses of functionalist comparison. Specifically, the treatment of legal rules as "solutions" to a common problem elides distinctive institutional, rhetorical, and discursive differences.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Full post as published by Law & Humanities Blog on December 10, 2008 (boomark / email).