Legal Translation Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The present book is a part of the research project in legilinguistic translatology, entitled: ‘Parametrisation of legilinguistic translatology in the scope of civil law and civil procedure’. Financial support was provided by the National Science Centre of the Republic of Poland (Sonata Bis Programme — research grant no. DEC-2012/07/E/HS2/00678, which enabled us to finance the research into the Polish-Greek language pair.
The basic assumptions for the parametric approach to the comparison of legal terminology in legal translation are presented in Chapter I. Legilinguistics, understood here as legal linguistics, is the discipline devoted to the nature, development and usage of legal language, while legilinguistic translatology, as a subdiscipline of translatology, concerns itself with the theory and practice of the translation of legal texts. As legilinguistic translatology is subdivided into theoretical and practical translatology, the present study is categorised as an investigation in the practical field. However there are some references to theoretical legilinguistic translatology also. The point of departure is the paradigm of legal communication, where the source text (here also called the ‘translandive text’) are Polish statutes in the area of civil law, the source-text author is the Polish lawmaker, the translation is a legal text (here also called the ‘translantive text’), the recipient is a Greek legal professional or judicial authority. The author and the recipient of the potential translation are both members of the professional legal communicative community, and simultaneously the author of the text is a member of the communicative community of the Polish language, while the recipient of the potential translation is a member of the Greek-language communicative community.
The research methodology is presented in Chapter II. The parametric comparative analysis takes as a point of departure terms excerpted from Polish civil law statutes, i.e. the Civil Code (Kodeks Cywilny) and the Code of Civil Procedure (Kodeks Postępowania Cywilnego), here also called ‘translandive units’. They are compared with Greek terms, which, first of all, come from Greek civil law statutes, i.e. the Civil Code (Αστικός Κώδικας [Astikos Kodikas]) and the Code of Civil Procedure Κώδικας Πολιτικής Δικονομίας [Kodikas Astikis Dikonomias]). If they are not present in statutes, they are excerpted from other legal genres, and, ultimately, if they are not present in other legal genres, either, then, they are excerpted from other lects (e.g. LSPs, vernacular lect) or potentially coined by the translator. The very first step of comparative analysis focuses on the meaning of the terms in a legal context. This is followed by analysis of the source-text unit compared with the translantive text (target text) in the context of the relevant dimensions of the terms. The dimensions are understood as a set of homogeneous properties that are used to calculate the distance between the compared terms. The set of minimal dimensions, which allow us to calculate the similarities and differences between the compared terms, comprises: genre, lect, branch of law, sub-branch of law and optional dimensions. The presumed objective of the comparative analysis is to determine: 1) lack of distance, where the compared terms can be recognised as synonyms; 2) short distance; where the compared terms can be recognised as translational equivalents; 3) significant distance, where compared terms cannot be recognised as translational equivalents, and there is a need to compensate for the lack of common dimensions; 4) lack of possible calculation because there is no term that could be compared on the basis of the aforementioned dimensions and their properties. Research material comprises the basic normative acts of Polish and Greek substantive and procedural civil law.
Firstly, the relevant dimensions are presented in hierarchical order (Chapter III); then, they are applied to calculate the distance between Polish and Greek civil law terms. They are investigated from the perspective of the relations of convergence (Chapter IV), polysemy (Chapter V), complementarity (Chapter VI), cognate words and potential false friends (Chapter VII), imprecise or flexible meaning (Chapter VIII), euphemisms and metaphors (Chapter IX). Semantic-lexical relations are investigated from the intralingual and interlingual points of view, within the framework of the language of Polish and Greek civil law.
Since comparative analysis of Polish and Greek terms is accompanied by certain directives of particularistic Polish-Greek legilinguistic translatology, under the relevant postulates of general legilinguistics, they are used within the translation algorithm. It should be stressed that the algorithm is presumed to be a set of actions executed in a certain order in order to achieve a certain result. Then, the translational algorithm based on parametric calculation of distance between compared legal terms is applied, and the explanation scheme is given (Chapter X).
In conclusion the results of the research are presented analytically and subsequently discussed in Chapter XI, with concluding notes are provided from the perspective of: 1) translation practice, and 2) lexicography and terminography in reference to LSP lexicography.