Multilingual Legislation in the European Union. EU and National Legislative-Language Styles and Terminology

Abstract

One approach is to consider a specific piece of EU text in a range of languages and consider how the text is reproduced in each language in terms of structure and terminology. Since the original draft is frequently made by non-native speakers and then translated into the other EU languages, which are bound by the structure of the base version, we obtain little information from it about divergent national linguistic and legislative methods. However, if the EU text is a directive which is transposed into national law, we should be able also to look at the national implementing legislation intended to implement the directive. The implementing texts are produced within the national legal context and, one assumes, aim at similar results, as laid down by the directive. Thus it could be expected that they should provide vehicles for study between the national systems and between each national system and the EU legal order. The paper explores these ideas to see where they lead.