WORDS AND PHRASES OF LATIN ORIGIN IN THE EUROLECT AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

The words of Latin origin are mostly remained in their original form, that is, they are not transposed in the Ukrainian legal Eurolect (in this case, in the Ukrainian text of the Association Agreement). Unlike Legal English, which long ago borrowed and got used to Latin expressions, the Ukrainian jurisprudence language is not peculiar for such borrowings. In addition, being elements of the legal Eurolect, they may confuse recipients who begin to interpret the legal text. The Latin words and expressions (that became the subject of this study) are in a list of the most commonly used Latin words in Legal English and pose per se no problems in translation. Nevertheless, an analysis of the language, contextual and legal meanings of Latin words makes it possible to see the differences in their reproducing in different languages and,
consequently, in different legal cultures within the institutional context. The comparative analysis of the texts of the Association Agreement and other EU instruments in several languages of the EU and Ukrainian allows to discover that the Latin words are inherent not to the English Eurolect as such, but to English itself, and therefore their direct borrowings into the Ukrainian Eurolect are not justified and substantiated. It is better to translate such elements by dictionary equivalents (inter alia as між іншим (Back-translation: incidentally, by the way) or у тому числі (Back-translation: among other things, including); by consensus as за згодою (Back-translation: by consent) etc.). Being deprived of a language tradition to use Latin words, Ukrainian language and, correspondingly, the Ukrainian Eurolect should not contain them as well (except ad hoc). Latin words inter alia and mutatis mutandis and others, which in most cases were left untranslated, should be translated in the Ukrainian legal Eurolect. A special attention in the present article is given to the quantitative data, dictionary definitions of Latin word and phrases, the contexts in which they are used and all the versions of translation of such elements used in the Eurolect.