The translator in the legal maze: The Dreyfus case

The so-called affaire Dreyfus was an historical event that made French society shudder at the end of 19th century and, consequently, it was an event that had widespread social and political repercussions in France owing to the fact that the press and contemporary mass media covered detailed information about such an affair. Actually, the mentioned Dreyfus affaire became a shared topic discussed by trade unions as well as by a number of intelectuals -such as Emile Zola, for instance, with his well known press article J'accuse). Our aim in this paper is to discuss the linguistic and terminological maze faced by legal text translators, and with that aim in mind we have chosen the 3rd June 1899 and 12th July 1906 sentences which were delivered by the French la Cour de cassation about this affair.