The formulaicity of criminal judgments : A German-Swedish translation study on legal collocations

This essay deals with the formulaic nature of court judgments in terms of language rather than content and structure. It focuses on legal collocations and the problems that may arise in translation from Swedish to German. In particular, the introductory formula of Austrian court decisions is discussed in comparison to the Swedish criminal judgment, which the essay is based on. However, other legal collocations are also examined. A qualitative legal linguistic analysis examines how these collocations are translated between two legal systems of two states. Furthermore, the question of which translation options are available and where the sources of errors regarding the translation are, is discussed. At the end a comparison of the collocations of the source text and that of the target text should clarify their similarities or differences. It is expected that there is a tendency that collocation based in the law (e.g. vållande till annans död) cannot be translated literally contrary to ordinary legal collocations (e.g. straffrättsliga ansvar). The former needs a cultural transfer in order to be perceived as equivalent by the reader of the target text