4.5 Legal Translation — Theory and Practice

Why it is a legal skill in Nepal: the state is bilingual in law — Nepali is the authoritative language of statutes, courts and drafts, while legal education, research and international work run in English; every lawyer translates daily (contract → court pleading; judgment → advice; Nepali statute → foreign client's memo).Theory (the concepts that organise practice):1. Equivalence — the central problem: formal (literal word-for-word) vs dynamic/functional equivalence (same legal effect). Legal translation demands functional equivalence — the reader must receive the same legal position, not the same words.2. The untranslatable problem — system-bound terms with no counterpart: birta, jagir, guthi,kipat, lalmohar, mukhtiyar, muluki ain, sanad — and English-to-Nepali mirrors: trust, bail,precedent, common law, consideration. Solutions: transference (keep the term, gloss it), literal translation + explanation, or a functional analogue with a footnote — never a silent substitution.3. Legal language's features that translation must respect: precision, formulaic register, defined terms, long conditional sentences, and the ambiguity deliberately left by legislatures.4. The interpreter's canon — a legal translation is an act of legal interpretation (Legal Method's rules follow the text across languages: the same provision read in two languages is one law, not two).Practice (the professional standards):1. Use the authoritative text — Nepal's statutes are Nepali originals; an English version is a translation the court need not follow — cite accordingly;2.…