TEACHING OF LEGAL ENGLISH – THEORY AND PRACTICE – IN SLADKOVICOVO, SLOVAKIA. WHAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT?

Jana Spálová (Trnava, Slovakia)

Teaching of legal English is at six law schools in the Slovak Republic realized under the title of the course "Stylistics of English legal texts". Students start with this subject already in the first year of their legal studies. Generally, students have in Bachelor programme within two semesters this subject - the Stylistics of English Legal Texts. Total amount of semesters when they can study this subject are two semesters of English law (The Stylistics of English Legal Texts). As a teacher of foreign languages we understand that for other foreign languages such as German and French, the number of lessons are sufficient as the German and French law come from the same legal culture as our Slovak law. A common feature to all law of the old continent is that it exhibits the same structure - whether we talk about legal norms, legal institutes, legal branches and legal dualism. Common institutes and branches results in the fact that the lawyer acting in any country of the old continent can easily understand law of another country in Central Europe. Of course, the internal rules are different, but we understand the legal institute - its nature, or essence. This is due to the common historical backgrounds - Roman law, canon law, Napoleonic code, and philosophical - legal theory.

The number of lessons, however, is insufficient for the English legal language, as English legal system is founded and formed on other principles. Perhaps, just this diversity has caused that the working language of the European Court of Justice is French, not English.

Anglo-American law does not provide reception of Roman law or the way of codification. It has developed separately and differently. Its most important source of law is the judicial practice that in our law is not a source of law. In contrast to the legal systems of the old continent, the study of two different legal systems requires certain adaptation, and research and analysis of legal institutions. In addition, comparison of the two legal systems is required. Most visible, it is seen in the translation of terms. The problem of translation, however, is caused not only by the characteristics of terms, but also by non-equivalency in the source and target language, the transition of the law change in the nature of the term due to the lapse of time, or  finally by the difference of cultures and by the  language itself.

In English, the term "law" can deter even a soulful interpreter - beginner. As it hides in itself two key concepts: some law and law. Uncountable "some law" the translator must translate as law/ branch of law, but countable "the law" as an act.

A very interesting example is the word "damage" which means damage, injury but in the plural form, the word "damages" means the exact negation- i.e. compensation (odškodné).

Another problem may be for the translator the typing error (e.g. leaving of a letter "s") or in other words ignorance of two completely different terms - and i.e. a multiple sentence or cummulative sentence ( in Slovak language it is more obvious - súhrnný a úhrnný trest). When speaking about the ignorance, we can speak about the ignorance of terms arising not from legal content but from history and literature. Tomášek speaks about "Enoch Arden Laws" (Tomášek, 1995, p. 85) - these are the laws that come from Tennyson's poem. Enoch Arden hides his existence from his wife. She considers him being dead and therefore she gets married again. The US laws that allow conclusion of a new marriage, if one of the couple made him/herself not known for a certain period of time, follow from this poem - (e.g. in State of New York this period is five years). This is a special pronunciation for being dead. If the translator does not know the historical - literary context, he can skip (leave) this fact or even s/he may believe that it is the law that are associated with a certain local name.

Another example of solving the translation problem can be a problem with the translation of the term "law of property". This is a property law, but the content of this term is different in the Slovak and English legal systems. English property law is concerned only with the real estate.

All this should be included in textbooks legal English. We have introduced some of these issues of translation in order to illustrate the importance of translation in teaching legal English, as well as at the compilation of textbooks for this subject.

Due to the limits imposed on the length of the text we will now focus solely on textbooks used at the Law Faculty in Sládkovičovo (Danubius University). In the early years of the university textbooks by Darina Urbánkova - English for law students were used at the faculty of law in Sládkovičovo. The university textbook, which was issued after the year 1990 already included exercises on reading comprehension, vocabulary exercises to practice. The authentic text materials contained therein can be used for extensive and intensive reading, while providing terminological basis.  The exercises as comprehension exercises facilitate the process of understanding; graphical summary tables provide training in vocabulary and syntax; Scrambled statement / paragraphs are focused on the training of cohesion and coherence of the text. Asking for details in different parts of the text is clarified by exercises Fill in the missing information and true / false exercises reveal the understanding of the text. Questions and exercises stimulate written or oral discussions even at above sentence level. Theory into Practice, a case in point are focused more on solving legal cases, but again they stimulate legal English at above the sentence level. Teaching text contains a glossary that provides not only a definition in English, but not the Slovak translation. Later we started to use a textbook by Marta Chromá - New Introduction to Legal English, Volume I and Volume II. This textbooks also contain authentic texts to practice vocabulary, except of exercises focused on syntax and vocabulary, and they include also translation exercises. We see great benefit of this textbook that it contains vocabulary English - Czech, which is very helpful in translating, in understanding the terminology and pointing out the differences in legal systems. However, these textbooks lack exercises on listening - so the component listening is completely eliminated or left on the teacher and students. A few years later, after the year 2000 new textbooks started to come from English-speaking countries - Krois-Linder, A. International Legal English and Krois-Linder, A - Firth, M. Introduction to International Legal English that fill the lack of training of listening skills. They contain texts and exercises aimed at training four communication skills and syntax, morphology and vocabulary of the English legal language - but do not contain a translation glossary, only monolingual dictionary. In addition, they do not cover all branches of the law. In the year 2007 we started to use the book by Kummerová Sylvie – Legal English - Fundamental Terms and Topics, which again does not practice listening and does not contain any dictionary. Rather, it is a book of law. Her positive side, we see that it contains more extensive and detailed comments on each of the legal issues. However, we must recognize that to create Listening comprehension for English legal practice in Slovakia is much more difficult; but we must admit it is not impossible. The latest legal textbook of English, which has occured on the Slovak market is English for Legal Purposes by Kurucová, Demovičová, Rozin and Bojsová. This is very similar to that of the textbook Kumerová but expanded diapason of legal issues which are still missing in Slovakia. Of course, our market offers much more books aimed at English legal - but we focused not only on those used in the Law Faculty of the University Danubius. Our aim was not to evaluate one of the mentioned books or to speak about its negatives, because each of these books is important in the area where the terminology is not yet explored in detail because of the variety of legal systems. But we want to point out that perfect textbook of legal English should include also a practice of receptive listening skill and because of differences in content of terms it should also contain translation dictionary or exercises on translation. As can be seen, textbooks, covering all the requirements for training in legal English still does not exist, but it is possible to replace it by the use of several books with this focus.

In conclusion, therefore, it may be added that the development in the creation of textbooks should focus on receptive skill of listening as listening is important for judges, advocates, prosecutors and even policemen when working with persons and translation training because this is what requires not only a legal practice.

References

CHROMÁ, M., 2003. New Introduction to Legal English, volume I. Praha: UK v Praze, Karolinium. ISBN 80-246-0720-4.

CHROMÁ, M., 2003.New Introduction to Legal English, volume II. Praha: UK v Praze, Karolinium. ISBN 80-246-0738-7.

KROIS-LINDER, A, 2006. International Legal English. Cambridge: CUP. ISBN 978-0-521-27945-1.

KROIS- LINDNER, A. – FIRTH, M. 2008. Introduction to International Legal English, Cambridge: CUP. ISBN 978-0-521-71899-8.

KUMMEROVÁ, S. a kol, 2007. Legal English and Fundamental Terms and Topics. Bratislava: Bratislavská vysoká škola práva. ISBN 978-80-88931-76-8.

KURUCOVÁ, Z. – DEMOVIČOVÁ, A. – ROZINA, E. – BOJSOVÁ, P., 2013. English for Legal Purposes. Žilina: Eurokodex. ISBN 978-80-8155-015-7.

URBÁNKOVÁ, D., 2000.  English for Law Students. Bratislava: UK. ISBN: 80-7160-1357