Approaching Ambiguity In International Treaties: Translators Between Interpretation, Drafting And Risk Management

Résumé: The present paper addresses a chimerism, a legal ambiguity occurring in a diplomatic context. It discusses the nature of ambiguity in international treaties, which is often intentional and constructive, and the challenge it poses in translation. Indeed, translators of international legal instruments are confronted with a myriad of linguistic considerations when interpreting treaties - which often contain ambiguities, challenged by the intertextual and interdiscursive nature of treaty texts in their endeavor of producing equally authentic texts in other languages, and bound to a meticulous risk-management approach when addressing ambiguities in the source language for translation purposes. The paper concludes that translators are not expected to explicit ambiguities in the source but to transfer such ambiguities into the target text, conveying, thus, the risk they bear.

Publié dans la revue: مجلة المفكر