scholarly journals Legal Language – Pragmatic Approaches to Its Interconnectivity with Legal Interpretation and Legal Translation1

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-438
Author(s):  
Ingrid Simonnaes
Keyword(s):  
Target Language ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Lay Persons ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Communicative Act ◽  
High Degree

The purpose of this paper is to enhance existing insights into the complex relationship between legal language, legal interpretation and legal translation that challenges the participants of a particular domain-specific communicative situation. This situation can be described as a complex communicative-cognitive procedure taking into consideration a pragmatic approach to reach its addressees on a continuum from lay persons to experts. The analysis of some “typical” examples shows (not surprisingly) that different kinds of knowledge are necessary in order to achieve a felicitous communicative act in which a high degree of specialist knowledge is of paramount importance to a successful result both in intra- and interlingual translation. The particular legal language under scrutiny, in other words German contrastive to Norwegian, form the basis for the analysis of the activity of translation in which the translator must be able to understand/interpret the text and must be aware of not taking the words at their “face value” to be able to render their meaning in the target language.

scholarly journals The Dubious Quality of Legal Dictionaries

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard-René de Groot ◽  
Conrad J.P. van Laer
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Legal Translation

As a consequence of the still increasing transnational commercial and scholarly cooperation and exchange, more and more often legal information has to be translated. Sometimes the content of legal documents (contracts, statutory provisions, books and articles on legal topics and so on) has to be translated into another language. But even more frequently, information on rules from one legal system has to be provided in the legal language of another legal system. In both cases the translator or the lawyer involved is confronted with difficulties of legal translation. In both cases bilingual legal dictionaries could play an important role in the translating process by providing translation suggestions and information on the linguistic context of terms in the target language, such as specific noun-verb combinations, or typical collocations.

A study of legal translation from the perspective of error analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pi-Chan Hu ◽  
Le Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Reference Tools

AbstractIn this research, we established a small scale corpus with abstracts in English and Chinese from the law reviews of Taiwan. We identified problems found in these abstracts and classified them into several categories. After analyzing the problems, we found that translators are faced with numerous problems when translating legal texts: the influence of ordinary language, lack of reliable reference tools, insufficiency of legal knowledge, deficiency in the target language or source language, and the peculiar characteristics of legal language. These problems simply render the task of translating even more intricate. Strategies will be proposed to enhance the ability of legal translators and to help them to overcome these obstacles.

Alfred Schütz : une autre théorie de la pertinence et son application en traduction

Fachsprache ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Margarete Flöter-Durr ◽  
Thierry Grass
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
One Year

Despite the work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1989), the concept of relevance has not enjoyed the popularity it deserved among translators as it appears to be more productive in information science and sociology than in translation studies. The theory of relevance provides underpinnings of a unified account of translation proposed by Ernst-August Gutt. However, if the concept of relevance should take into account all parameters of legal translation, the approach should be pragmatic and not cognitive: The aim of a relevant translation is to produce a legal text in the target language which appears relevant to the lawyer in the target legal system, namely a text that can be used in the same way as the original source text. The legal translator works as a facilitator from one legal system into another and relevance is the core of this pragmatic approach which requires translation techniques like adaptation rather than through-translation or calque (in the terminology of Delisle/Lee-Jahnk/Cormier 1999). This contribution tries to show that relevance theory, which was developed in the field of sociology by Alfred Schütz, could also be applied to translation theory with the aim of producing a correct translation in a concrete situation. Some examples extracted from one year of the practice of an expert law translator (German-French) at the Court of Appeal in the Alsace region illustrate our claim and underpin an approach of legal translation and its heuristics that is both pragmatic and reflexive.

Translators’ and revisers’ competences in legal translation

Target ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Parra-Galiano
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assurance ◽  
Revision Process ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Professional Profile ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Professional Translator

Abstract This article proposes a hierarchy of translator and reviser competences in prototypical scenarios in legal translation with a view to determining the most appropriate revision foci to ensure translation quality. Built on a prior characterisation of the most common professional translator profiles in legal translation, the proposal for a hierarchy of competences derives from two premises: (1) The professional profile of those who translate and revise legal documents is very diverse in terms of competence and qualifications (training and experience), and (2) translation competence and specialist knowledge in legal fields (i.e., domain competence) are fundamental when revising to guarantee the quality of legal translations. The proposal is framed by quality assurance in legal translation through a revision process based on (1) the coherent management of the work of the translators and revisers involved in the translation project, and (2) the appropriate methodology for revision applied to legal translation by adapting the revision mode’s focus to ensure its effectiveness. Six common scenarios are identified in light of the translators’ profiles, for which revisers’ profiles are then proposed in order to detect any legal translation competence deficiencies among translators, and thus ensure quality.

scholarly journals On Legal English Translation from the Perspective of Legal Linguistics

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Weifeng Hu
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
International Exchange ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Rights And Interests ◽  
Transnational Trade

With the deepening trend of globalization and the development of economy and society, the demand for international exchange talents is increasing. Especially with the increasing number of transnational corporations, almost every company should have professional legal translation employees to guarantee their legitimacy of transnational trade and effectively prevent the infringement of related rights and interests. Therefore, to improve the quality in transnational translation business and optimize legal English translation skills from the perspective of legal language can not only offer a reference for the industry, but also provide evidence for the problems arising from the actual legal translation process. Based on the perspective of legal linguistics, this paper tries to puts forward appropriate legal English translation measures mainly by analyzing the skills of legal English translation, with a view to providing some references for relevant scholars.

scholarly journals Internationalisms in German and Polish legal language

2021 ◽  
Vol 145 ◽  
pp. 229-244
Author(s):  
Joanna Woźniak
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
The Common

Internationalisms – especially those of the Latin provenance – prove the common cultural heritage of European countries. The aim of the article is to describe the nature and the origin of internationalisms by the examples taken from German and Polish legal language. The essay characterizes both international lexemes, syntagmas, phraseologisms and sentences, which have been grammatically adapted to the target language as well as Latinisms which were taken over in their original form.

Handling Quantity in Variability Models for System-of-Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (05) ◽  
pp. 693-724
Author(s):  
Daisuke Shimbara ◽  
Motoshi Saeki ◽  
Shinpei Hayashi ◽  
Øystein Haugen
Keyword(s):  
System Of Systems ◽  
Tree Structure ◽  
Entire System ◽  
Simple Experiment ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Variability Model ◽  
Very High ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Parent Node

Problem: Modern systems contain parts that are themselves systems. Such complex systems thus have sets of subsystems that have their own variability. These subsystems contribute to the functionality of a whole system-of-systems (SoS). Such systems have a very high degree of variability. Therefore, a modeling technique for the variability of an entire SoS is required to express two different levels of variability: variability of the SoS as a whole and variability of subsystems. If these levels are described together, the model becomes hard to understand. When the variability model of the SoS is described separately, each variability model is represented by a tree structure and these models are combined in a further tree structure. For each node in a variability model, a quantity is assigned to express the multiplicity of its instances per one instance of its parent node. Quantities of the whole system may refer to the number of subsystem instances in the system. From the viewpoint of the entire system, constraints and requirements written in natural language are often ambiguous regarding the quantities of subsystems. Such ambiguous constraints and requirements may lead to misunderstandings or conflicts in an SoS configuration. Approach: A separate notion is proposed for variability of an SoS; one model considers the SoS as an undivided entity, while the other considers it as a combination of subsystems. Moreover, a domain-specific notation is proposed to express relationships among the variability properties of systems, to solve the ambiguity of quantities and establish the total validity. This notation adapts an approach, named Pincer Movement, which can then be used to automatically deduce the quantities for the constraints and requirements. Validation: The descriptive capability of the proposed notation was validated with four examples of cloud providers. In addition, the proposed method and description tool were validated through a simple experiment on describing variability models with real practitioners.

PROBLEMS OF LEXICAL EQUIVALENTING OF RUSSIAN PARTICLES IN A BILINGUAL DICTIONARY

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 99-107
Author(s):  
Larisa Alimpieva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Bilingual Dictionary ◽  
Bilingual Dictionaries ◽  
Communicative Act ◽  
The Russian Language ◽  
Bilingual Lexicography

In the process of communicative act Russian particles concurrently fulfil different functions. It makes Russian particles an important unit of functional-pragmatic sphere of the Russian language which is characterized by its national specifics and connotativity. The problem of codification of Russian particles in bilingual lexicography is complicated. The main problem at compiling a dictionary lemma is filiation (division of meanings) of Russian particles and their rendering by lexical means of a foreign language. The existing lexicographic descriptions of Russian particles in bilingual dictionaries irrelevantly reflect the structure and contents of their meanings. The aim of the article is to consider some theoretical problems of description of Russian particles by means of a second (target) language in dictionary lemmas of bilingual dictionaries.

scholarly journals The Role of a Domain-specific Language Mechanism in Learning Natural and Unnatural Stress

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela C. Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Domain Specific Language ◽  
Training Procedure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Artificial Language Learning ◽  
French And English

AbstractIn an artificial language-learning task, two groups of English and French participants learned one of two language rules: 1) stress the first heavy (CVC) syllable, else the first syllable, or, 2) stress the first light (CV) syllable, else the first syllable. French and English participants were chosen to compare learning outcomes by speakers of different native stress systems, fixed and variable. Participants were trained on the target language by listening to a set of nonsense familiarization words exemplifying the stress rule. This was followed by a forced-choice task to choose the correct version of the words they had just learned. Following the training procedure, participants were tested on novel words with the same stress pattern to which they were familiarized. The result of the novel word testing was that the natural rule with stress on heavy syllables was learned significantly better than the unnatural, stress light syllables, rule. To account for the learnability of both the natural and the unnatural rules, I argue for the interaction of a general cognitive mechanism that facilitates learning in general and a domain-specific language mechanism that can access universal phonological principles to aid in learning a natural language rule.

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