Supporting legal scholars’ efforts to communicate in English as a lingua franca in a globalised world Revision of legal academic writing
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article examines problems encountered in revising legal academic texts translated into English or written in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) by legal scholars themselves. It starts by discussing globalisation and the rise of ELF in general and specifically in law and academia, considering the importance of publishing in English for individuals and academic journals. This is followed by a presentation of the Polish perspective on globalisation, as well as the challenges of revising academic legal writing. Specific examples are provided from the author’s professional experience in revising such texts. Two error-prone areas were selected: fixed phrases (including Latin) and legal terminology. Results from several corpora of English are used to justify corrections. Conclusions concern the considerable power and responsibility of revisers, as well as the need for greater awareness of the pitfalls of legal translation and better MT literacy among legal scholars.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The documents contained in these directories are included by the contributing authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work on a non-commercial basis. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
References
ALBL-MIKASA, Michaela. (2017) “ELF in translation/interpreting.” In: Jenkins, Jennifer; Will Baker & Martin Dewey (eds.) 2017. The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. London: Routledge, pp. 369-383.
ALBL-MIKASA, Michaela & Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow. (2019) “ITELF: (E)merging Interests in Interpreting and Translation Studies.” In: Dal Fovo, Eugenia & Paola Gentile (eds.) 2019. Translation and Interpreting. Convergence, Contrast and Interaction. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 45-62.
ALBL-MIKASA, Michaela; Giovanna Fontana; Laura Maria Fuchs, Lena Meret Stüdeli & Aline Zaugg. (2017) “Professional translations of non-native English: ‘before and after’ texts from the European Parliament’s Editing Unit.” The Translator 23:4, pp. 371-387.
ANTONINI, Rachele. (2021) “Non-professional translators and interpreters.” In: Gambier, Yves & Luc van Doorslaer (eds.) 2021. Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 5. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 171-176.
AZUELOS-ATIAS, Sol. (2018) “Making legal language clear to legal laypersons.” In: Kurzon Dennis & Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (eds.) 2018. Legal Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 101-111.
BENNETT, Karen & Rita Queiroz de Barros. (2017) “International English its current status and implications for translation.” The Translator 23:4, pp. 363-370.
BIEL, Łucja. (2008) “Legal terminology in translation practice: dictionaries, Googling or discussion forums?” SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation 3, pp. 22-38. http://www.skase.sk/Volumes/JTI03/pdf_doc/BielLucja.pdf
BIEL, Łucja. (2014) “The textual fit of translated EU law: a corpus-based study of deontic modality.” The Translator 20:3, pp. 332-355.
BIEL, Łucja & Vilelmini Sosoni. (2019) “EU legal culture and translation in the era of globalisation. The hybridisation of EU terminology on the example of Competition Law.” In: Vogel, Friedemann (ed.) 2019. Legal Linguistics Beyond Borders. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 207-228.
BISKUP, Rafał. (2007) “Dobre obyczaje w działalności gospodarczej.” Annales. Etyka w życiu gospodarczym 10:1, pp. 151-161.
BOWKER, Lynne & Jairo Buitrago Ciro. (2019) Machine Translation and Global Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.
BROWN, Lesley (ed.). (1993) The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
CAO, Deborah. (2007) Translating law. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
CHESTERMAN, Andrew. (2001) “Proposal for a Hieronymic Oath.” The Translator 7:2, pp. 139-154.
CORDERO-MOSS, Giuditta. (2011) “Conclusion: the self-sufficient contract, uniformly interpreted on the basis of its own terms: an illusion, but not fully useless.” In: Cordero-Moss, Giuditta (ed.) 2011. Boilerplate Clauses, International Commercial Contracts and the Applicable Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 344-373.
CORDERO-MOSS, Giuditta. (2013) “International arbitration is not only international.” In: Cordero-Moss, Giuditta (ed.) 2013. International Commercial Arbitration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-39.
ENGBERG, Jan. (2013) “Comparative law for translation: the key to successful mediation between legal systems.” In: Borja Al-bi, Anabel & Fernando Prieto Ramos (eds.) 2013. Legal Translation in Context. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 9-25.
ENGBERG, Jan & Kirsten Wølch Rasmussen. (2003) “Danish Le-gal Language in International Commercial Arbitration.” In: Bhatia, Vijay; Christopher N. Candlin & Maurizio Gotti (eds.) 2003. Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 111-154.
FARRELL, Michael. (2023) “Do translators use machine transla-tion and if so, how?” In: Moorkens, Joss & Vilelmini Sosoni (eds.) 2023. Translating and the Computer 44. AsLing. 24-25 November 2022 European Convention Center, Luxembourg. Geneva: Editions Tradulex, pp. 49-60. https://www.tradulex.com/varia/TC44-luxembourg2022.pdf
FIRAT, Gökhan. (2021) “Uberization of translation. Impacts on working conditions.” The Journal of Internationalization and Localization 8:1, pp. 48-75.
FRY, Deborah. (2009) “Crisis, What Crisis? Industry, What Indus-try?” In: Vande Walle, Jean-Marie (ed.) 2009. International Conference The World in Crisis And the Language Industry? Geneva, 13 & 14 November, 2009. Genève: Editions Tradulex.
GAŁUSKINA, Ksenia & Joanna Sycz. (2013) “Latin maxims and phrases in the Polish, English and French legal systems - the comparative study.” Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 34, pp. 9-26. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.2478/slgr-2013-0020
GÉMAR, Jean-Claude. (2013) “Translating vs Co-Drafting in Multilingual Countries: Beyond the Canadian Odyssey.” In: Borja Albi, Anabel & Fernando Prieto Ramos (eds.) 2013. Legal Translation in Context. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 155-178.
GIAMPIERI, Patrizia. (2018) “The Web as Corpus and Online Corpora for Legal Translations.” Comparative Legilinguistics 33:1, pp. 35-56. https://doi.org/10.14746/cl.2018.33.2
GODDARD, Christopher. (2009) “Where legal cultures meet: translating confrontation into coexistence.” Investigationes Linguisticae 17, pp. 168-205. https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/il/article/view/9314/9022
GOLDSTEIN, Tom & Jethro K. Lieberman. (2016 [1989]) The Lawyer’s Guide to Writing Well. Oakland: University of California Press.
GOTTI, Maurizio. (2007) “Legal discourse in multilingual and multicultural contexts.” In: Kredens, Krzysztof & Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski (eds.) 2007. Language and the Law: International Outlooks. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 21-33.
HORNER, Bruce. (2017) “Written academic English as a lingua franca.” In: Jenkins, Jennifer; Will Baker & Martin Dewey (eds.) 2017. The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. London: Routledge, pp. 413-426.
HOUSE, Juliane. (2013) “English as a lingua franca and translation.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 7:2, pp. 279-298.
HÜLMBAUER, Cornelia. (2009) “‘We don’t take the right way. We just take the way that we think you will understand’ - The shifting relationship between correctness and effectiveness in ELF.” In: Mauranen, Anna & Elina Ranta (eds.) 2009. Eng-lish as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 323-347.
KAULIŅŠ, Kaspars. (2022) Establishing National Language Tech-nology Platforms in EU Member States. Online: https://www.lr-coordina-tion.eu
KECSKES, Istvan & Monika Kirner-Ludwig. (2019) “‘Odd struc-tures’ in English as a lingua franca discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 151, pp. 76-90.
KIELAR, Barbara Z. & Joanna Miler. (1993) “Through the looking glass of translation - The verb phrases of the statutory clauses in ‘Kodeks handlowy’ and their English renditions.” In: Miler Joanna (ed.) 1993. International Forum of Legal Translation 1992. Warszawa: TEPIS, pp. 41-53.
KJÆR, Anne Lise. (2007) “Phrasemes in legal texts.” In: Burger, Harald et alii (eds.) 2007. Phraseologie. Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung, vol. 1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 506-516.
KOPACZYŃSKA-PIECZNIAK, Katarzyna. (2016) “Zasada uczciwości kupieckiej jako zasada prawa handlowego.” Studia Iuridica Lublinensia 25:1, pp. 161-179.
KULCZYCKI, Emanuel. (2023) The Evaluation Game. How Publication Metrics Shape Scholarly Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
KULCZYCKI, Emanuel; Ewa A. Rozkosz & Aneta Drabek. (2019) “Internationalization of Polish Journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Transformative Role of the Research Evaluation System.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 44:1, pp. 9-38. https://doi.org/10.29173/cjs28794
KUREK, Halina. (2015) “Język prawny i prawniczy na przełomie wieków (perspektywy badawcze i zagrożenia).” Zagadnienia Naukoznawstwa 51:3, pp. 303-310.
LAURÉN, Christer & Sauli Takala. (2018) “Dominance of ESP in various domains in the context of global English.” In: Humbley John; Gerhard Budin & Christer Laurén (eds.) 2018. Languages for Special Purposes. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 255-266.
LEAL, Alice. (2022) “The European Union’s translation policies, practices and ideologies: time for a translation turn.” Perspectives 30:2, pp. 195-208. Online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0907676X.2021.1927121
LILLIS, Theresa & Mary Jane Curry. (2010) Academic Writing in a Global Context. The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. London: Routledge.
MATULEWSKA, Aleksandra. (2009) “Methods of expressing deontic modality in English and Polish statutory instruments in the aspect of translation.” Comparative Legilinguistics 1:1, pp. 133-145. https://doi.org/10.14746/cl.2009.01.10
MATULEWSKA, Aleksandra. (2017) Contrastive Parametric Study of Legal Terminology in Polish and English. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe CONTACT.
MONIZ, Helena & Carla Parra Escartín (eds.). (2023) Towards Responsible Machine Translation. Ethical and Legal Considerations in Machine Translation. Cham: Springer.
MOORKENS, Joss. (2020) “‘A tiny cog in a large machine’: digital Taylorism in the translation industry.” Translation Spaces 9:1, pp. 12-34.
MOSSOP, Brian. (2020 [2001]) Revising and Editing for Translators. London: Routledge.
O’BRIEN, Sharon; Michael Simard & Marie-Josée Goulet. (2018) “Machine Translation and Self-post-editing for Academic Writing Support.” In: Moorkens, Joss et alii (eds.) 2018. Translation Quality Assessment. From Principles to Practice. Cham: Springer, pp. 237-262.
PĘZIK, Piotr. (2012) “Wyszukiwarka PELCRA dla danych NKJP.” In: Przepiórkowski, Adam et alii (eds.) 2012. Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo PWN, pp. 253-273.
RAYAR, Louise. (1999) “The quality of source texts.” In: Tomaszczyk, Jerzy (ed.) 1999. Aspects of Legal Language and Legal Translation. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, pp. 157-140.
REA RIZZO, Camino & María José Marín Pérez. (2012) “Structure and design of the British Law Report Corpus (BLRC): a legal corpus of judicial decisions from the UK.” Journal of English Studies 10, pp. 131-145.
SANDRINI, Peter. (2006) “LSP Translation and Globalization.” In: Gotti, Maurizio & Susan Šarčević (eds.) 2006. Insights into Specialized Translation. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 107-120
SANDRINI, Peter. (2018) “Terminology work in different domains: legal terminology.” In: Humbley John; Gerhard Budin & Christer Laurén (eds.) 2018. Languages for Special Purposes. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 509-521
ŠARČEVIĆ, Susan. (1997) New Approach to Legal Translation. Den Haag: Kluwer Law International.
ŠARČEVIĆ, Susan. (1990) “Terminological Incongruency in Legal Dictionaries for Translation.” In: Magay, Tamás & Judit Zigány (eds.). BudaLEX ’88 Proceedings. Papers from the 3rd International EURALEX Congress, Budapest, 4-9 September 1988. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, pp. 439-446.
SCOTT, Juliette. (2017) “The pernicious effects of terms used for and by the legal translation profession.” Revista de Llengua i Dret 68, pp. 57-75. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2436/rld.i68.2017.2969
SETKOWICZ-RYSZKA, Anna. (2023) “Peculiarities of Polish academic legal writing in English translation: field experts vs. algorithms.” In: Moorkens, Joss & Vilelmini Sosoni (eds.) 2023. Translating and the Computer 44. AsLing. 24-25 No-vember 2022 European Convention Center, Luxembourg. Ge-nève: Editions Tradulex, pp. 61-69. Online: https://www.tradulex.com/varia/TC44-luxembourg2022.pdf
SETKOWICZ-RYSZKA, Anna. (2022a) “Why can plain English in contracts cause difficulties in translation into Polish?” Lingua Legis 30, pp. 45-67. Online: http://lingualegis.ils.uw.edu.pl/index.php/lingualegis/article/view/72/65
SETKOWICZ-RYSZKA, Anna. (2022b) “Wyrażenia łacińskie w polskich i angielskich tekstach prawniczych z perspektywy tłu-macza.” In: Kujawska-Lis, Ewa; Anna Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska & Olga Letka-Spychała (eds.) 2022. Komu-nikacja międzykulturowa w świetle współczesnej translatologii, vol. 9: Języki, teksty, interpretacje. Olsztyn: Wydawnictwo UWM, pp. 219-232.
SPICHTINGER, Daniel. (2020) The Spread of English and its Appropriation. Unpublished M.A. thesis. Wien: Universität Wien. Online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267094642_The_Spread_of_English_and_its_Appropriation
SZEMIŃSKA, Weronika. (2014) “Translating law into dictionaries, or why one dictionary is not enough.” In: Budin, Gerhard & Vesna Lušicky (eds.) 2014. Languages for Special Purposes in a Multilingual, Transcultural World. Wien: Universität Wien, pp. 118-125.
VETTESE, Maria Celeste. (2011) “Multinational companies and national contracts.” In: Cordero-Moss, Giuditta (ed.) 2011. Boilerplate Clauses, International Commercial Contracts and the Applicable Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 20-31.
VIEIRA, Lucas Nuñes. (2020) “Machine translation in the news.” Translation Spaces 9:1, pp. 98-122.
VIEIRA, Lucas Nuñes; Minako O’Hagan & Carol O’Sullivan. (2021) “Understanding the societal impacts of machine trans-lation: a critical review of the literature on medical and legal use cases.” Information, Communication & Society 24:11, pp. 1515-1532. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1776370
VIEIRA, Lucas Nuñes; Carol O’Sullivan; Xiaochun Zhang & Minako O’Hagan. (2022) “Machine translation in society: insights from UK users.” Language Resources and Evaluation 57, pp. 893-914. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-022-09589-1
WAY, Catherine (2016) “The challenges and opportunities of legal translation and translator training in the 21st Century.” International Journal of Communication 10, pp. 1009-1029. Online: https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3580/1576
WILLIAMS, Christopher. (2004) “Legal English and Plain Language: an introduction.” ESP Across Cultures 1, pp. 111-124.