Legal Language And Legal Translation

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In general, Translation is “an operation on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another”. Documentary translation is regarded as an act of communication which tackles legal translation. Legal translation is a special type of an act of communication which takes place “in the mechanism of the law”. Only professional translators specialize in legal translation because legal translation is the foundations of social relationship as marriage, contract, agreements and civil rights such as wills and inheritance. Moreover, when translating a text within the field of law, the translator should keep the following in mind. The legal system of the source text (ST) is structured in a way that suits that culture and this reflected in the legal language similarly to the target language (TT). The general characteristic features of English and Arabic legal translation are lexical, …show more content…

It is hard to fully appreciate the nature of legal language without having some familiarity with its features. Legal language has the following lexical features such as, frequent use of Old and Middle English words: Archaic expressions borrowed from old English, and are not normally used in modern Standard English, except for legal documents and perhaps poetry, are one of the distinctive features of legal language. Words such as, hereof, thereof, and whereof (and further derivatives, including -at, -in, -after, -before, -with, -by, -above, -on, -upon etc) are not often used in ordinary English. They are used in legal English primarily as a way of avoiding the repetition of names of things in the document, very often, the document itself, for example, "the parties hereto" instead of "the parties to this contract". Moreover, -er, -or, and -ee name endings in names and titles, such as employer and employee, or lessor and lessee, According to Febrero, S, L, J. (2003). Legal English

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