Multilingual Legal Information Access: an Overview

Multilingualism is a phenomenon which greatly affects the efficiency of information exchange among people in every sector of life. Cross-language retrieval systems are tools that contribute to such exchange, supporting research and worldwide communication, helping to search for data irrespective of the language in which information objects are expressed. In particular, in the domain of law a vast category of users need to exchange legal information worldwide and carry out activities in a context where a common understanding of law beyond language barriers is highly desired. However, this requirement is hard to meet, due to the variety of languages and modes in which the legal discourse is expressed as well as to the diversity of legal orders and the legal concepts on which these systems are founded. Internationalisation and increasing globalisation of the market economy and social patterns of life have created a situation where the need for legal information from foreign countries and from different legal systems is greater than ever before. There is no doubt that the exchange of information is largely dependent on language, to be intended not only as a system of symbols, but also as a means of communication (Wittgenstein 1997) and thus as a tool for mediating between different cultures (Kjaer 2004b). If we consider the language of the law, we notice that the properties of such a language have a major impact on the exchange of legal information. In fact, the language of the law is the expression of legal identities that vary according to systems and countries, where different languages are used to express legislation, case law and doctrine as main components of the various legal cultures (Sacco 2005, Fletcher 2005). In the current multilingual and multicultural environment there is a significant need – in the academic area, in the legal profession, in business settings as well as in the context of public administration services to citizens – of common understanding and exchange of legal concepts of the various legal systems, while there is a strong pressure for the preservation of their basic sense and value. Both requirements are quite difficult to meet, complicated by the complexity of the legal language and by the variety of modalities used to express law within the various legal systems.