The effect of multilingualism in the EU on European legal translation

Abstract

Sometimes it may be argued that multilingualism in the European Union or legal translation could be an obstacle to the proper functioning of the EU’s Internal Market due to discrepancies that may result from translating one language version to another. In practice, the EU cannot function as an Internal Market without multilingualism. Subsequently, this paper seeks to argue that after all, legal translation is an inherent element of legal harmonisation, intrinsically connected to the very foundations of the EU and therefore it cannot be an obstacle. Therefore this paper investigates how and to what extent EU legal translation contributes to achieving legal harmonisation in the EU thereby. In fact the arguments presented seek to show that EU legal translation is one link in the chain which strengthens the overall success of European harmonisation making a contribution to this ongoing debate. However, this research is by no means exhaustive. Not least because the EU is ever evolving and so are academic contributions to this debate.