Series | Medieval and Modern Philologies
Review | Translating: A Journey in Time
Chapter | Perspectives on Translating Medieval Law
Perspectives on Translating Medieval Law
The Norwegian Landslov of 1274
Abstract
This paper demonstrates strategies in translating the first national law-code of Norway, the Landslov from 1274, into English. One can argue the need to have Old Norwegian law in English to make it more accessible. To ensure that a target audience distant in time and culture are able to understand the law, the paper argues that translators of Old Norwegian law must pay special attention that the vocabulary they select has equivalence of meaning in modern English. Historical legal terms and administrative positions and divisions often have no direct modern equivalent, or even have a misleading modern English cognate.
Submitted: Jan. 17, 2018 | Accepted: Feb. 19, 2018 | Published May 24, 2018 | Language: it
Keywords Old Norwegian • Legal translation • Landslov • Law • Old Norse
Copyright © 2018 Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-248-2/008
