Zum Nutzen von ausgangssprachlichen Korpora beim Verstehen und Übersetzen von Rechtstexten

Today it is impossible to imagine the practice and didactics of professional translation without corpora. Even in the field of law, monolingual corpora provide valuable information on the use of language in context, despite all the limitations that arise from conceptual and textual differences in translations between different legal systems. However, the focus of interest is generally on the context of the target language and synchrony. This paper, on the other hand, uses Italian and German notarial deeds as an example to demonstrate the usefulness of diachronic source language corpora for understanding current legal texts as a prerequisite for their translation into the other language. Notarial deeds are characterised by a strong but not rigid formulaicity, which always presents a challenge in translation. The formulas have mostly crystallized within the notary's office, are conditioned by convention and tradition and are more or less understandable in view of their socio- and idiolectic features. Due to the wide scope of variation that the formulas offer, comparing them can be an important aid to understanding, which helps to avoid translation errors. Source language corpora thus prove to be a valuable complement to the target language corpora and other resources.