On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code

Husinec, Snježana

doi:10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3

Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, Vol. 50 No. 1, 2024.

Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3

On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code

Snježana Husinec orcid.org/0009-0003-3419-4800 ; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

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page 45-67

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cite

APA 6th Edition

Husinec, S. (2024). On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code. Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, 50 (1), 45-67. https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3

MLA 8th Edition

Husinec, Snježana. "On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code." Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, vol. 50, no. 1, 2024, pp. 45-67. https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3. Accessed 18 May 2026.

Chicago 17th Edition

Husinec, Snježana. "On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code." Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik 50, no. 1 (2024): 45-67. https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3

Harvard

Husinec, S. (2024). 'On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code', Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, 50(1), pp. 45-67. https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3

Vancouver

Husinec S. On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code. Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik [Internet]. 2024 [cited 2026 May 18];50(1):45-67. https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3

IEEE

S. Husinec, "On the Historical Development of the Croatian Legal Language: A Review of the Croatian Translation of the Croatian Translation of the General Civil Code", Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, vol.50, no. 1, pp. 45-67, 2024. [Online]. https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.3

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to examine the improvements of the first Croatian translation of the Austrian Civil Code (ABGB) in the 1899 private edition to acquire new insights into the historical development and standardization of the Croatian legal terminology and language. The first Croatian translation of the ABGB is of great significance for the history of the Croatian legal language. It was completed in 1953, after Croatian was declared the official language (Vince, 2002: 282). It was reviewed for the 1899 private edition by a distinguished Croatian jurist and law professor Franjo Josip Spevec, after the Association of Croatian Lawyers expressed its dissatisfaction with the Croatian translation declaring it inadequate (Spevec, 1899: III). The analysis of Spevec’s corrections revealed what type of translation errors he corrected. For the purpose of discovering correspondence with the terms of legal practice, Spevec’s proposals were contrasted with the terminology used by the Croatian judiciary (Husinec, 2020) and in the journal of the Association of Croatian Lawyers Mjesečnik (Mamić, 1992) at the end of the 19th century. The results reveal major shortcomings of the Croatian legal language and terminology used in legislation at the turn of the 20th century, in particular their potential to adequately express the concepts of the modern legal profession and science.