Our publication of The Greek Penal Code (Law 4619/2019) is just around the corner, as we’re in the very final stretch of putting final touches on the book before it is published. The process took years, with the translation side taking up just months of that time. In actual fact, the majority of the time involved editing and research. With that in mind, we wanted to shed light on how much work went into translating a single term of the Greek Penal Code (hereinafter “GPC”).

Article 13 of the GPC is a rarity among the Greek Codes, as it provides definitions for numerous terms used throughout the Code. These definitions are certainly helpful prima facie, but also constitute a double-edged sword. For the purposes of this post, we will be focusing on Article 13(b), which provides a definition for the term “οικείος”.

Before discussing the approach we took, we feel it important to underline that there are several aspects that must be considered before even attempting to translate the term and its definition. We have to bear in mind:

1. the context of the term in vernacular, everyday Greek as any Greek speaker would understand it
2. the context of the term in legal Greek
3. the context of the term in the domain of criminal law in legal Greek
4. how case-law has interpreted the term.

Our first reaction was to translate the term as “relative(s)”, given the definition seen in the Article in question, which includes one’s direct blood relatives, adoptive parents and adopted children, foster parents and foster children, spouses, partners in a stable relationship, civil partners, fiancé(e)s, siblings and siblings’ spouses, partners and fiancé(e)s, as well as former spouses, partners and fiancé(e)s.

However, the first twist appears at the end of the definition. Would someone you were engaged to for, say, a month but then broke the engagement off count as a “relative”? Greek law would say yes. Would the same apply to, for example, your sister’s former fiancé? Again, apparently yes.

The second twist comes halfway through the definition, where reference is made to one’s tutors or juvenile probation officers (where one is a juvenile), or to persons under one’s tutorship or custody.  These are cases (provided for in the Civil Code, our translation of which is in the editing stages) where a person who is not related by blood or marriage to a juvenile is entrusted with their care (including cases provided for in Article 122 of the GPC). One would be quite hard-pressed to call a juvenile probation officer entrusted with caring (temporarily or otherwise) for a juvenile their “relative”.

With these considerations in mind, we turned towards theory and case-law, consulting analyses of the Penal Code, dissertations by law students, and examining pertinent Supreme Court (and lower court) judgments, as well discussing the matter with practicing attorneys in order to get a feel for real-life situations where the term (and its definition) have come up.

Our first stop was the Explanatory Memorandum («Αιτιολογική Έκθεση») of the bill introducing Law 4619/2019 containing the Penal Code. The relevant passage of the Memorandum reads:

“As regards the concept of ‘οικείος’, it was deemed necessary for the new definition to now also include the members of one’s so-called ‘social’ family, in which contemporary society has recognised a role corresponding to the one played by the traditional family which is based on blood ties. Thus, the concept of ‘οικείος’ is extended to all those lawfully related in the direct line […]”[i].

This immediately informs us that even the legislator has come to take a broader view of the term.

We then examined case-law, and came across several judgments discussing the term. The most interesting was Supreme Court Judgment 845/2019 (7^th Chamber, Criminal Law) concerning defamation. The most salient passage reads as follows:

“However, the above actual facts which the defendant alleged, of which a large number of people learned, such as court officers, court process servers, attorneys and the ‘οικείοι’ of the civil claimant (relatives, his father-in-law and other tenants in his building) […]”.

Again, the courts seem to take a broad interpretation of the term and, it would seem, even broader than the definition provided in Article 13(b) of the GPC. This is particularly interesting when considering that this is indeed a criminal-law case.

This broader interpretation is also supported by legal research, where “[…] it is claimed that the category of ‘οικείοι’ must also include third parties who, despite not possessing any of the statuses provided for in Article 13 of the GPC, have a close relationship with the witness, such as, for example, his fellow tenants”[ii].

Turning to legal theory, we see that the term “οικείοι”, in other domains of law, certainly includes persons other than relatives. For instance, in medical law:

“‘Οικείοι’ means not just the persons related by family to the patient, but also third parties within the patient’s intimate environment”[iii].

Bearing all the above in mind, we became convinced that “relatives” would be a misleading rendering of the Greek term, and opted for a term that would reflect this broader interpretation that has become established. We thus settled on “related parties”, believing that this translation best encapsulates all the considerations discussed above.

Translating is never about just replacing one word with another. The nuances to be deciphered, cultural considerations to be pondered and research to be undertaken just to translate a single term that appears a handful of times in the Code is an example of the hard work it took to get to this point, just days away from publication.

[i] Available at https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/2f026f42-950c-4efc-b950-340c4fb76a24/k-poinkod-eis-NEO.pdf

[ii] Saramanti, Vasiliki-Ioanna, ‘Special categories of witnesses in the fight against financial crime: “public interest witnesses”, “witnesses victims of human trafficking”, “trusted witnesses” & “expert scientists”’, 2022, available at https://ikee.lib.auth.gr/record/343517/?ln=en

[iii] Psaroulis, D., Voultsos, P., ‘Medical Law. Elements of Bioethics’. 2021 (in Greek), University Studio Press.