“N/A: No concise terminological solution has been found to designate the concept”. Exploring the Third Space of Terminology Transfer in EU Legal Translation

This paper aims to explore the notion of Third Space in EU legal translation by means of a terminology-driven analysis of translation compromise solutions traced in the interinstitutional EU terminology database IATE. From a methodological point of view, the analysis combines a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. The first quantitative phase consists in querying IATE—in particular, its Comparative Multilingual Legal Vocabulary collection—in search of those traces of cultural compromise left in the translation transfer by lawyer-linguists working at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The second qualitative phase aims to map the translation techniques used by lawyer-linguists to cope with the absence of equivalent terms. The focus of this qualitative section is on conceptual voids (“N/A”/“Vide”) and “Formulations” found in Spanish as main source and target language/legal system in combination with English, French and Italian as source/target languages/legal systems.