Contrastive rhetoric in teaching how to translate legal texts

In this article I put forward a methodological model for training legal translators, based on the premise that translation is a cross-text operation, and that texts can be classified into genres according to structural characteristics and linguistic conventions which are more or less stable. Text conventions, however, can change from one culture to another, which means that translators must be familiar with both source and target text conventions and modify them accordingly to meet the requirements of the translation brief. In the case of legal genres, these are characterised by the fact that their text conventions are more stable than those found in other fields, a fact which can facilitate learning how to translate legal texts. Subsequently, I propose two teaching units based on the use of contrastive rhetoric. The units are organised from a task-based approach which allows for the staging of tasks with increasing degrees of difficulty. These teaching units could be used as a model for translation instructors teaching introductory courses on legal translation.