Legal Language – a Cultural Ambassador. A Language for Various Purposes, not only a Language for Specific Purposes

KONFERENCE SINGAPORECulture-related competenceCourses in comparative Spanish -Danish legal language: A cultural Kinder egg?Learning comparative legal language is not only a question of linguistic competence, but it is also cultural training in which the students achieve culture-related competences as culture is implicitly embedded in many legal terms in the shape of historical, societal and legal knowledge from two different worlds. Students need to understand these legal terms, fixed expressions, metaphors, collocations, etc. in order to be able to translate from one legal language/culture to another. It means also overcoming the typical blindness to one’s own culture. The Spanish-Danish Legal Language course introduces Danish language students to a new world of cultural knowledge, as they generally have insignificant knowledge of Danish law and the Danish legal system. Furthermore, they have no knowledge of Spanish law and the Spanish legal system. In this paper I will discuss some of the problems/possibilities the students meet when trying to ‘translate’ from one legal language/culture to another also in the case of culture-bound terms with little or no equivalence. The examples are taken from my classes of Spanish Legal Communication at Aalborg University, Denmark. )