TOOL-BOXES FOR EFFICIENT TEACHING LEGAL TRANSLATION TO LAW AND TRANSLATION UNDERGRADUATES

Legal translation is considered to be among the most difficult professions to acquire, and even more – it requires permanent development and ‘tuning’ all through the professional life-span. Though legal translation has been taught for many years at different Universities of most countries, both the teachers and students are challenged with quite a number of problems of teaching methodology and learning strategies. Actually, the debate of what is more efficient – to teach translation methodology to law school graduates or legal issues to professional translators seems as old and hectic as that of the hen’s and egg origin.

The panacea for legal translators’ training has not been discovered or developed so far; yet, the authors basing on their long professional experience in training legal translators have developed their own methodologies – one for developing law students into legal translators and the other for translation students’ development into legal translators.

The tool-boxes offered include a concept of holistic professional development and a concept of early introduction to the legal translator’s profession, two sets of specific exercises and the algorithm for the beginning legal translator.

The results of the authors’ comparative research have proved the efficiency of the offered methodologies and are to be shared with all interested professionals.