Differences and Similarities in the Legal Lexicon of English and Spanish Contract Law

Drafting & interpreting legal texts at an international level constitutes an imperative need in itself, especially within the scope of transnational commercial agreements. The problem lies in the fact that every legal system has its own kind of language, as a direct consequence of the peculiarity of its own sources & hermeneutic procedures. Specifically, the language of American contract law -- which has a deep influence on the way international trade agreements are drafted -- presents a variety of lexical hues that very often make them untranslatable into Spanish. This is especially true of those terms called false cognates or false friends, technical words whose Latin origin & similarity to Spanish make them more dangerous when analyzed. Precisely, creating a paradigm by means of which these terms could be studied & explained is the aim of the work at hand. To the very least, we would like to make translators & linguists aware of the difficulties of this area of specialized discourse. References. Adapted from the source document