Legal-based Ontologies Between serious needs and challenging realities

Legal-based Ontologies Between serious needs and challenging realities Lahousseine Id-youss, Frieda Steurs & Abied Alsulaiman Ku Leuven Abstract: Analysing the conceptual knowledge of a subject-field into a system, where the conceptual relations between different concepts in terms of subordination and coordination become clearly visible, is of utmost importance in terminology work (De Bessé, 1997; Cabré, 1999). As a matter of fact, the construction of such concept systems constitutes the final goal of thematic terminology research as opposed to ad hoc research where the focus is usually on isolated individual concepts (Thelen, 2012). Establishing law-based concept systems seems to have a unique position in comparison with other kinds of ontologies, and this can be attributed partly to the special character of legal corpora and partly to the nature of legal concepts (Sarcevic, 1997; Cao, 2007). While most ontologies are applicable at world level, their legal counterparts have a national (or regional) character. Legal concepts emerge and evolve within national or geographic borders independently of their counterparts in the rest of the world, and this reality has serious consequences for communication across legal systems. Communication across legal systems comes in the form of comparative law, which is concerned with examining basic terms and legal structures in an international context (Galdia, 2003), as well as in the form of legal translation where functional equivalence across legal systems is sought. Legal translation itself is sometimes viewed as an act of comparative law (De Groot, 1992, cited in Sarcevic, 1997), because the two fields basically deal with the same kind of semasiological and onomasiological problems. Semasiologically speaking, legal concepts exhibit a great deal of conceptual asymmetries, in the sense that concepts belonging to different legal systems have different internal realities (Id-youss, 2016). In the same vein, legal notions can sometimes be peculiar to a legal system, a phenomenon known as “system-bound concepts” (Sarcevic, 1997). These two factors, among other ones, make legal communication an arduous task. From an onomasiological perspective, the systemic diversity that has just been referred to gives rise to issues of lexical gaps. Obviously, the problem of ‘lexical gap’ should not be seen here as a simple linguistic matter which may entail that the concept exists but its designation in another language is absent due to standardization issues. In this article we will attempt to further illustrate the peculiar nature of legal ontologies based on the outcome of a Ph.D., carried out in the fields of marital and divorce laws in Morocco (Id-youss, 2016). The methods pursued in conceptually analysing the two subject-fields will be outlined, and the resulting marriage and divorce concept systems will be presented. References: Alcaraz Varó, E. & Hughes, B. (2002). Legal translation explained. Manchester: St. Jerome. Barzilai, G. (2007). Law and Religion. Ashgate Pub Co. Cabré, M. T. (1999). Terminology: Theory, methods, and applications (Vol. 1). John Benjamins Publishing. Cao, D. (2007). Translating law. Multilingual Matters. de Bessé, B. (1997). Section 1.3 Concept Description. Handbook of Terminology Management: Basic aspects of terminology management, 1(3), 63. Dworkin, R. (1986). Law's empire. Harvard University Press. Galdia, M. (2003). Comparative law and legal translation. In The European Legal Forum. Issue 1 (pp. 1-4). Geeraerts, D. (2009). Theories of lexical semantics. Oxford University Press. Glanert, S. (2014). Comparative Law: Engaging Translation. Routledge. Hart, H. L. A. (1958). Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals. Harvard Law Review, 593-629. Heylen, K. & Steurs, F. (2014). Translating legal and administrative language: How to deal with legal terms and their flexible meaning potential. Turjuman, 23 (2), 96-146. Id-Youss, L. (2016). Concept System Construction: a Step toward better legal Communication. Lane, A. (1982). Legal and Administrative Terminology and Translation Problems. Langage du droit et traduction, 219-231. Šarčević, S. (1997). New approach to legal translation. Kluwer Law International. Thelen, M. (2012). The structure of the lexicon: Incorporating a cognitive approach in the TCM lexicon, with applications to lexicography, terminology and translation. Academia Press.

ISBN:978-2-919732-80-7

Publication year:2018

Accessibility:Closed