الفهرس 
Features of English Legal LanguageOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 271 |  |  |
| | | from | 271 | | |
Abstract
Difficulties and problems of legal translation emerge not only from the specialized nature of legal discourse in terms of style, structure and vocabulary but also from that legal translators are expected to convey not only the lexical meaning of words but also of the legal meaning and legal effect or in general the legal system conventions of the source language. Hence, a good translation is the one that conveys the same impact on the target-language readers similar to the one that the original text has on the source-language readers. So, legal translators should upon translating legal texts ask some important question like: who is the intended audience? Then, what is the purpose of the text? Answering those two questions means to determine which strategy should be used to handle any issues or problems of translation. Legal discourse is classified into three main categories: the academic texts which consist of academic research journals and legal textbooks and may be less formal and binding as they merely convey legal information to those working in the field of law; the second category is the judicial texts covering court judgments or legal reports and are more formal and binding than the first category; the third one is the legislative or statutory writings consisting of legislations, acts, contracts, treaties, conventions, etc., which are highly formal and highly specialized and also highly semantic. Legal translation challenge lies in that it combines the inventiveness of literary translation and the terminological precision of technical translation based upon a difference between the legal systems of the language pairs involved as well as the system-bound nature of legal terminology. So, to get a good translation one should render a translation that: making sense, conveying the spirit and manner of the original, having a natural and easy way of expression and producing a similar 225 response. Legal translators stand at crossroad to achieve a very difficult task: to bridge various legal systems, languages and cultures. The basic difficulty of legal translation lies in overcoming the cultural differences between languages and so scholars stress the importance of cultural awareness on part of the legal translator beside his ability to overcome also the linguistic barriers of the two languages as the matter for legal translation between English and Arabic due to the differences found between the English and Arabic legal systems. Due to the specific nature of legal discourse, a variety of theories and approaches have emerged to deal with legal translation. Linguists have attempted first to apply theories of general translation to legal texts such as Nida’s theory of formal correspondence and Vermeer’s Skopos theory. In contemplating legal language, scholars began to question the usefulness of applying theories of general translation to legal translation and argued that legal language has a specific nature which requires a specific theory adequate to this type of translation. This new legal theory based on analyzing legal translation as an act of communication in the field of law. The aim of legal translation is not only conveying a message, but also transferring the same effects of the source text or at least bearing the same meaning. So, whoever composes or translates a legal document must exert the greatest efforts to ensure that it says exactly what he wants it to say, and at the same time gives no opportunities for misinterpretation. Legal language has many oddities that are clear evidence of the kinds of effort that have been made on the part of draftsmen and translators. Of all uses of language, legal language is perhaps the least communicative and this is another factor for its unusualness. Legal writers know that their productions are fit for someone as familiar with the jargon as themselves and here 226 lies the difficulty of legal translation. This jargon is represented in that much legal writing is by no means spontaneous but it has established formulae. Over time, legal language has developed and influenced by both French and Latin clearly appeared in the excessive use of archaic terms and expressions. A legal document is generally characterized by unbroken format and it is quite common for draftsmen to compose an entire document in the form of a single sentence. Hence, legal documents have been drafted without paragraph divisions and even long and thinly punctuated sentences to be the rule rather than the exception. The extremely long sentences expand by means of subordinating devices and as a result legal sentences are usually self-contained units which mean that they convey all the meaning that has to be conveyed without need to be linked closely either to what follows or to what has gone before. The only formal linkage to be found between the long and self-contained sentences is the use of repetition of lexical items. There are other means used to avoid the repetition of lexical items including the use of anaphora where a substitute word- such as pronouns or forms of verb to be or the demonstratives this and that- refers back to a lexical item that would otherwise have needed repeating. The trouble with these substitutes is that they may refer back to an item other that what the writer had in mind a matter which may cause ambiguities and confusions which cannot be accepted in legal documents. Legal English is unique in terms of its lexical and syntactic features. It is characterized by ’terms of art’ which means having highly technical terms and terms with a semi-technical meaning and further general everyday vocabulary. Legal English includes also Latinism, French and archaic terms. Analysis of legal documents has shown that these lexical features occur in all most of legal texts and gives legal language along with fixed linguistic aspects such as modals and 227 enactment formulas the sense of formality which is considered another distinctive feature of legal English. As regards, the syntactic level it has been concluded from the present study that legal English is characterized by many syntactic features such as long and complex sentences, nominalization, passivization, binomials, modal auxiliaries which give legal language the peculiarity and uniqueness among other varieties of language. As to the textual features concerning cohesion represented in lexical repetition being a cohesive device. The use of subordinating or coordinating conjunctions such as: ’and’, ’or’ and the hybrid conjunction ’and/or’ are also a common feature in legal texts and contribute to its difficulty and general English avoids recurrence but it is acceptable in English legal discourse to repeat the same word several times in a text. Translating legal English texts is never an easy task. It involves for the translator to be familiar with certain lexical and syntactic features of legal English as well as the legal system of both language pairs: the source and the target and also to master both SL and TL linguistic system. It is apparent form the analysis that the starting point in translating legal documents is to establish its function, i.e. whether the product of the translation process is going to be an authentic and authoritative version of the original and this entails a prescriptive function or not and in this case it may be an informative function. With the prescriptive or normative function of the source text, the translation aims to produce the same purpose and the same legal effects. After determining the function of the legal text, the role of legal translator emerges which is not mere a role of intermediate between the writer and the receiver of legal texts but it goes beyond that. The legal translator is indeed a 228 second producer, rather a first producer of a new legal text independent from the original as it is addressed to new readers and audience. It is important then for the translator to choose the appropriate technique of translation. ’Literal translation’ is the most common technique in translating the system-based and culture-bound terms and hence legal translation is highly formal, highly semantic and highly specialized. The analysis has shown that other techniques may be used like transposition which can be used in translating archaic terms. The analysis has also shown that there is a range of different translation strategies are adopted upon translating documentary texts like UN documents including changing the order of sentences, translating nouns into verbs, changing passive voice into active voice and so on; it is hard to say literal translation strategy is still the prevailing strategy in UN translation especially when translating politically sensitive words/phrases.