ABSTRACT
From a vision of language as representation, both translation and legal studies have undergone significant changes inrecent years which have allowed them to question core conceptslike neutrality and universality. Increasing attention has been paidto the influence of ideology, position, gender, race, hegemony andmarginalization in the understanding, reading and rendering of atext. This paper focuses on some of the problems and ethical dilemmas inherent to and often hidden in legal translation, drawingon Bourdieu’ s concepts of habitus and capital and on his understanding of legal texts as signs of authority aimed at being believedand obeyed. It contributes to the articulation of the tenets of anew concept of responsibility which arises from an awareness ofthe ideological intricacies of meaning and the influence of powerrelations in the understanding of texts.
