Traditions, translations, betrayals: dialogues among legal cultures

Abstract

Based on insights from jurists regarding “legal traditions” – their uses and premises,
whether drawing on concepts such as “reception” or “legal transplantation” – this
text seeks to address this debate through the notion of “translation,” that is, the
movement of approximation between the tasks of the translator and the historian,
as an interpreter of the different languages of the past. Observing the notion that,
according to theorists, translation always involves a process of “loss” (Steiner),
“negotiation” (Eco) or even “manipulation” (Aslanov), the relationship between “legal
traditions” in time and space must always be read from the perspective of specific
complex historical contingencies, involving the interests present in the historical
context that preside over the “translation” of a given legal“ tradition ”into another
geographical or temporal context.” The way in which the 19th century Brazilian jurist,
Teixeira de Freitas, made his peculiar adaptation of the legal legacy of foreign civil law
to the Brazilian context, in his “Consolidation of Civil Laws” is provided as an example
of this translation process.