Terminological Equivalents Between Spanish and German Judicial Bodies: A Contrastive Analysis

Abstract

The concept of equivalence in translation becomes consistent with Nida (1964), who integrates the different prevailing perspectives at the time and describes the necessary processes to establish them. However, this concept focuses mainly on terminology. In the legal field, Pigeon (1982), Gémar (1995, 2015), or Mayoral (2004) among others, include legal systems in their explanations of the concept of functional equivalence. This viewpoint lead us to consider the possibility of establishing equivalences between legal figures within two different cultures. Based on these authors and relying on the principle of comparability that is necessary for the establishment of equivalents (James, 1980), we studied the different levels in which we can analyse the German and Spanish judicial bodies, specifically, at their hierarchy, territory, and competences, and carried out a contrastive analysis between languages based on the models of Arntz (1990), Gémar (1995, 2015), Holl (2012) and Holl and Elena (2015). Therefore, in this paper we suggest a translation proposal and an equivalence approach to make these institutions understandable and to adapt them to the recipient of the target text. The result of our study reveals that it is possible to apply this model to judicial systems.