The Status of Translation in Legislative Bilingualism
Canada’s legal bilingualism has precipitated the strong presence of translation in the legislative process. The legislative text, often polysemic and abstruse, brings its own particular difficulties to the task of the translator. In order to overcome challenges obstructing statutes, the legal community developed the fundamental principle of the rule of equal authority. According to the rule, both versions of a statute carry the same status and value. However, translation has been criticized by many jurists. These criticisms resulted in the development of federal laws on co-writing, which in turn eliminated translation from the legislative process. This paper aims to point out these criticisms and to illustrate the paradox in the legal community.