Theft law adrift

Abstract

The text is a translation of an excerpt (pp. 8–13) from Chapter One “Theft Law Adrift” of the book “Thirteen Ways to Steal a Bicycle” written by the American Law Professor Stuart P. Green. The book offers a detailed analysis and overview of the historical development of theft as a crime in USA law regarding its definition, blameworthiness, punishment, and legal regulation through the years. The analysis is based on lay people's attitudes toward theft-related crimes depending on the type of item stolen and the way it was taken. The book is written in accessible language incorporating many legal terms in addition to case-law and real-life examples. The book may be of interest to legal experts, legal translators, and anyone curious about the topic. The presented excerpt translation provides a glance at the overall topic of the work but it also presents translations of legal terminology which is generally polysemous, translates contextually and all meanings' translations are hard to find in extant English-Bulgarian printed and online dictionary sources. The Bulgarian and English languages belong to different legal systems – the Continental or Civil Law System and the Anglo-Saxon or Common Law System) and this distinction poses a major challenge in terminology translation.