Translating End-User License Agreements from English into Spanish

Authors

  • Carmen Bestue UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
  • Mariana Orozco Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona

Keywords:

legal translation, localisation of legal texts, end user license agreements, cultural adaptation of legal texts, knowledge transfer to translation companies, translation process

Abstract

The observation of the general practices of translation of End-User License Agreements from English into Spanish lead to the finding that some companies accounted for the difference between the legal requirements of the source text - the original text, in English - and the target text - the translated text, in Spanish - whilst others did not. This finding flagged up the need to improve the way in which professional translators approached the translation of these documents by providing them with the appropriate tools. Therefore, an application was created to provide all the necessary information in both the legal field - in the form of advice and links to Spanish and European statute law existing in the matter - and the linguistic field - in the form of a terminological database with specific advice for the translation key terms, a revised corpus with suggestions for translating typical clauses, and other tools that will be thoroughly explained in the article.

Author Biographies

  • Carmen Bestue, UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
    Lecturer at Translation and Interpretation Department, Autonomous University of Barcelona
  • Mariana Orozco, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona

    Professor

    Department of Tanslation and Interpreting

References

Bestué, Carmen (2013) Los contratos traducidos. La traducción de los contratos de licencia de uso en programas de ordenador. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch, Col. Derecho y tic’s.

------ and Orozco-Jutoran, Mariana (2011) ‘La necesidad de la naturalidad en la reformulación en la traducción jurídica en la ‘era de la automatización’ de las traducciones’, JosTrans. The Journal of Specialised Translation 15: 180-199.

------ and Torres, Olga (2013) ‘Technology and e-resources for legal translators: the Law10n project’ in Pilar Sánchez Gijón (ed) The Coming of Age of Translation Technologies in Translation Studies. London: Peter Lang.

Ginsburg, Jane C. (2013) “Authors’ transfer and license contracts under U.S. copyright law”, in: Jacques de Werra (ed.) Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Licensing. Cheltenham U.K. & Massachusetts U.S.A.: Edwars Elgard Publishing.

Hillman, Robert A. (2010) “Contract Law in Context: The Case of Software Contracts” Cornell Law Faculty Publications. Paper 193. Available at http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/193

------ and O'Rourke, Maureen, "Principles of the Law of Software Contracts: Some Highlights" (2010). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. Paper 192. Available at

http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/192

Landy, Gene K. (2008) The IT/Digital Legal Companion. Burlington: Elsevier.

Lommel, Arle (2007). The Globalization Industry Primer. Available at http://www.acclaro.com/assets/files/downloads/whitepapers/lisa_globalization_primer.pdf

Luque, Manuel et al. (2001) “Work place injuries and tort liability” Available in: http://www.indret.com/pdf/021_en.pdf.

Marotta-Wurgler, F. (2011). “Will increased disclosure help? Evaluating the recommendations of the ALI’s ‘Principles of the Law of Software Contracts’”, University of Chicago Law Review, 78 (1) 165-186.

Nord, Christiane (1997) Translating as a Purposeful Activity. Functionalist Approaches Explained, Manchester: St. Jerome.

------ (2006) “Loyalty and fidelity in Specialized translation”, Revista de Traduçao científica e Tecnica. 4, 29-41.

Orozco-Jutoran, Mariana and Sánchez-Gijón, Pilar (2011) “New Resources for Legal Translators”, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. 19 (1) 25-44.

Orozco-Jutoran, Mariana (2014) “The EULAs labyrinth: mapping the process”, Across Languages and Cultures, 15 (2).

Downloads

Published

2015-03-22

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2015)

Section

Legal Services Based on Free Access to Legal Information

License

Copyright Agreement with Authors

Authors submitting a paper to JOAL automatically agree to confer a limited license to JOAL if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication. This license allows JOAL to publish a manuscript in a given issue, by any means, anywhere in the world. Authors whose submissions have been accepted then have a choice of:

  1. Dedicating the article to the public domain. This allows anyone to make any use of the article at any time, including commercial use. A good way to do this is to use the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication Web form; see http://creativecommons.org/license/publicdomain-2?lang=en.
  2. Retaining some rights while allowing some use. For example, authors may decide to disallow commercial use without permission. Authors may also decide whether to allow users to make modifications (e.g.translations, adaptations) without permission. A good way to make these choices is to use a Creative Commons license.
    • Go to http://creativecommons.org/license/.
    • Choose and select license. Choose "generic" if you are in the U.S. and "text" for JOAL articles.
    • What to do next — you can then e–mail the license html code to yourself. Do this, and then forward that e–mail to JOAL’s editors. Put your name in the subject line of the e–mail with your name and article title in the e–mail.
    Background information about Creative Commons licenses can be found at http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/.
  3. Retaining full rights, including translation and reproduction rights. Authors may use the statement:  © Author 2013 All Rights Reserved. Authors may choose to use their own wording to reserve copyright. If you choose to retain full copyright, please add your copyright statement to the end of the article.