The legal language is the language of rules and regulations aimed at realizing order and justice, to defend public interests and personal interests in society. However, because legal language is part of modern Indonesian, it must be fixed, clear, monosemantic, and meet the aesthetic requirements of Indonesian.




The characteristics of Indonesian legal language lie in the terms, composition and style of the specific language and the content of the special meaning. The legal language that we use today is still in the old order style, there are still many imperfect semantics of words, the form and composition of the sentences, there are still terms that are not fixed and unclear. Which is because the legal scholars in the past, never received special legal language lessons and did not pay attention and learn the terms and rules of Indonesian.


This weakness is due to the legal language that we use is influenced by terms which are translations of Dutch legal language made by Dutch legal scholars who are more proficient in Dutch grammar than Bahasa Indonesia grammar.

Next we have to admit that compared to foreign languages ​​that are rich in terms, our language is still poor in terms. So in translating the Dutch term, legal scholars make their own terms, this often results in the use of terms that are not in accordance with their true intentions. There are times when we translate two or more foreign legal terms with just one term or one term we translate into several Indonesian legal terms. To overcome the error of understanding, we often find in the legal literature the author put the original language in parentheses.


The translation sometimes raises questions for ordinary people, for example the term in customary law is called elopement, as a translation of vlucthuwelijk and wegloophuwelijk. What is meant by elopement is running for marriage by a single girl, as is the case in Batak, Lampung and Bali. In Makassar it is known as silariang.

Another example in terms of civil law, in terms of Dutch civil law there are known verbindtenis there are those who translate agreements there are those who translate agreements. There is also a Dutch legal term overeenkomst there are translating agreements that translate agreements, this will certainly confuse ordinary people and for those who are just learning law.


Likewise, in criminal law there is a Dutch legal term called straafbaarfeit, some translate criminal events, some translate criminal acts and some others translate criminal acts, whereas the real intention is events that can be punished. Then there is a term that has become a part of the flesh in the legal community, whoever is the translation of the word Hij die, which is meant by whom does not belong to anyone, but he (doing) or whoever does it.