TRANSLATING TERMINOLOGIZED LEXIS OF THE ENGLISH LEGAL EUROLECT (BASED ON THE ASSOCIATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE EU AND UKRAINE)

Abstract

Legal translation is generally considered to be one of the most difficult domains of translation, especially institutional translation, where the professional language, or English legal eurolect, is full of jargon words, nomenclatures, doublets, Latin words and general terms that have become specific within the EU. Here, we should bear in mind the multilingualism of the EU, which makes it an exceptional one. On the other hand, it creates difficulties in translation. Since every language (apart from the differences in interpreting legal documents in a country that a language represents) has its own “principles”, norms, and traditions. Therefore, being a special component of legal eurolect, lexis with special meanings requires a separate comparative legal and translation analysis. The article offers results of a theoretical and empirical research into words and expressions which gain special meaning or become terminologized in the EU context (e.g., lexemes to transpose / transposition / transposition period; modalities; cross-border; social inclusion; traceability; copyright exception were studied) as well as specifics of their translation into some official EU languages (German, French and Polish) and a non-official language (Ukrainian). In addition the notion of terminologization, there exist two more related notions – de- and transterminologization. For instance, on the one hand, one of the meanings of a polyequivalent word modalities makes it a transterminologized word (referring to deontic logic that studies modalities with deontic statements forbidden, allowed, obligatory, etc.) and, on the other hand, a terminologized one (being a EU jargon word, it means procedure, method, mode, arrangements, terms of / procedure / detailed rules /implementation, etc.). In such a case, the context a word is used in is of paramount importance and a translator should be very careful when dealing with such words.
In the course of the research it was also shown that there is a problem with standardized and fixed versions of translation of such words into Ukrainian. It is better to translate lexis with special meaning literally (by direct adapted borrowing (with specifics of the target language considered)) or when it is impossible, one should use modulation and explicitation. Among other things, the present article contains an in-depth investigation of the content and definitions of the vocabulary with special meaning and offers my own variants of their translations.