Studying the Dynamics of Understanding and Legal Neologisms within a Linguistically Diverse Judicial Space: The Case of Motherhood in Belgium

In this paper, we report on a study of legal neologisms, i.e. specialized denominations prior to their potential adoption into the formal rule of law. In our study, we found conceptual asymmetry related to the subcategorization of 'motherhood' in the French and Dutch language communities within the shared judicial space of Belgium's Federal Law. The conceptual asymmetry results in a so-called 'translation asymmetry', in the sense that legal neologisms in one language do not have a direct equivalent in the other language. We will discuss examples of conceptual and translation asymmetry and reflect on possible implications for translation.