Legal Meaning Across Languages: Human and AI Translations of The Moroccan Family Code

Abstract

The growing reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) in legal translation brings forth important concerns about reliability, accountability and the preservation of legal meaning. Not only do AI tools provide speed, consistency and broad accessibility to legal terminology but they significantly contribute to the globalized circulation and translation of Arabic texts. This circulation enhances the global reach of the Arabic legal diaspora across jurisdictions and legal systems. Moreover, the continuous translation of Arabic legal texts by AI systems contributes to the modernization and digital enrichment of the Arabic language itself. Legal texts demand far more than linguistic transfer, they require approaches grounded in both fidelity and creativity. Fidelity is linked to the search for exact or near legal equivalence based on a national vision of translation. While creativity allows translators to devise functional solutions when direct equivalents are absent and allows a more globalized translation. Although scholars have long debated fidelity and creativity in translation studies, their application in automated legal translation remains underexplored. This paper is a comparative study that addresses this gap by examining how human translators and AI systems namely ChatGPT and Google Gemini handle complex terms in the translations of the Moroccan Family Code (MFC). The focus is on Book One, “Of Marriage” where different concepts highlight the tension between literal accuracy and contextual adequacy. Results revealed that Google Gemini's choices not only approximate human solutions but also illustrate functional equivalence by balancing semantic precision with cultural relevance. The comparison demonstrates that AI is capable of integrating both fidelity and creativity and offers acceptable interpretations on a more globalized scale. The conclusions of this study imply that both AI and human translation can achieve translations that respect legal fidelity and cultural diversity.