Conferences

PECULIARITIES OF LEGAL TEXTS TRANSLATION

Олеся Барбанюк

(Кам’янець-подільський національний університет імені Івана Огієнка)

PECULIARITIES OF LEGAL TEXTS TRANSLATION

Without a doubt, translation provides an opportunity to enrich one’s own culture through comprehension of cultural, political, economic, artistic aesthetic development of other ethnic groups in the process of interlingual interaction. Being the process of transforming a text from one language into equivalent text of another language and the corresponding result, the translation, though, cannot be an absolute copy of the original, since language and cultural barriers do cause the loss of some aspects of content.

Intercultural communication resulted in various types of translation, designed to facilitate the process of international understanding. One of the special types of translation is legal, which aims at translating texts relating to the field of law and exchanging legal information. Legal translation has several features, which should be considered since they produce difficulties: 1) specific legal vocabulary; 2) special idioms, set expressions and phrases not used or rarely used in general literary language; 3) stylistic deviations (elliptical structures, inversions in official style); 4) Latin words and expressions.

General research on the translation of legal texts became the subject of academic interest for such scientists, as V. Alimov, S. Vlasenko, І. Klimenko, V. Karaban, L. Chernovaty, V. Slepovych, E. Shchepotina, and others, but the problem of adequacy of legal texts’ translation needs further in-depth study [1; 2; 3; 5; 6].

Hence, to achieve the adequacy and equivalence of legal translation it is necessary to comprehend the specifics of the language of legal acts. Recently, there appeared a new concept of “legal language”, which, as L. Hoffmann noted, is a set of all language means used in the field of law to carry out successful communication between specialists within this field [4, p. 7].

Here, one is to consider, as well, the rules of legal technique – the rules of legal work and legal documents’ arrangement, etc. [7, p. 3]. The main linguistic aspect of the legal technique is an accuracy that indicates that legal terms, which fix rules of law in the texts, optimally reflect their valid content. Hence, the terms must be unambiguous, semantically rigid, clearly correlate with the concepts they are used to denote.

Legal texts are characterized by high objectivity, which excludes any expression of the subjective opinion of the translator who translates the legal text. Besides, a legal document cannot contain emotionally colored vocabulary, words in figurative meaning, colloquial or slang vocabulary. Usually, any legal document is drafted according to the established sample. So, lack of details, violation of the document structure, inaccuracy in the use of words can lead to the loss of validity of the document. So, a translator should be especially attentive to the peculiarities of the legal documents.

Hence, to achieve the equivalence in legal texts’ translation, one must take to account the peculiarities of the language of legal acts. Such features include accuracy, unambiguity, clarity, accessibility and availability, a large number of terminological constructions, inadmissibility of synonymy, and emotional coloring. The translator should ensure logical connection, resolving inconsistencies, and achieving objectivity in presenting legal text. To achieve adequate and equivalent translation, transformations are inevitable as well.

REFERENCES

  1. Алимов В. В. Юридический перевод. Практический курс. Английский язык. М.: КомКнига, 2005. 160 с.
  2. Власенко С. В. Перевод юридического текста: когнитивные особенности номинации и реалии-профессионализмы в языковой паре английский-русский. Филологические науки в МГИМО. Сборник научных трудов № 21 (37). М.: МГИМО(У), 2005. С. 129-140.
  3. Гамзатов М. Г. Техника и специфика юридического перевода: Сб. статей. СПб., 2004. 184 с
  4. Касяненко Д. С. Особливості перекладу та лексичної гармонізації законодавчих актів ЄС в контексті євроінтеграції України: автореф. дис. … канд. філолог. наук: 10.02.16. Одеса, 2011. 22 с.
  5. 5. Латышев Л. К. Курс перевода: эквивалентность перевода и этапы его достижения. Москва : Просвещение, 1980. 160 с.
  6. 6. Панов М. І. Точність правових норм як необхідна умова якості правотворення. Юридична техніка : доктринальні основи та проблеми викладання: тези доповідей та повідомлень учасників науково-практичної конференції (м. Харків, 30 вересня – 1 жовтня 2015 року). Харків : Нац. юрид. ун-т ім. Ярослава Мудрого, 2015. С. 12–15.
  7. 7. Шутак І. Д. Юридична техніка: доктринальні аспекти. Юридична техніка: доктринальні основи та проблеми викладання: тези доповідей та повідомлень учасників науково-практичної конференції (м. Харків, 30 вересня – 1 жовтня 2015 року). Харків : Нац. юрид. ун-т ім. Ярослава Мудрого, С. 3–7.