Arabic-English-Arabic Legal Translation

Hanem El-Farahaty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317596691
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Lingue

Arabic-English-Arabic Legal Translation provides a groundbreaking investigation of the issues found in legal translation between Arabic and English. Drawing on a contrastive-comparative approach, it analyses parallel authentic legal documents in both Arabic and English to examine the features of legal discourse in both languages and uncover the different translation techniques used. In so doing, it addresses the following questions:

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• What are the features of English and Arabic legal texts?

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• What are the similarities and differences of English and Arabic legal texts?

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• What are the difficult areas of legal translation between English and Arabic legal texts?

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• What are the techniques for translating these difficult areas on the lexical and syntactic levels?

Features include:

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• A thorough description of the features of legal translation in both English and Arabic, drawing on empirical new research, corpus data analysis and strategic two-way comparisons between source texts and target texts

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• Coverage of a broad range of topics including an outline of the chosen framework for data analysis, a historical survey of legal discourse developments in both Arabic and English and detailed analyses of legal literature at both the lexical and syntactic levels

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• Attention to common areas of difficulty such as Shariah Law terms, archaic terms and model auxiliaries

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• Many examples and excerpts from a wide selection of authentic legal documents, reinforced by practical discussion points, exercises and practice drills to encourage active engagement with the material and opportunities for hands-on learning.

Wide-ranging, scholarly and thought-provoking, this will be a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates on Arabic, Translation Studies and Comparative Linguistics courses. It will also be essential reading for translation professionals and researchers working in the field.

1 Introduction

1.1 AIMS OF THE BOOK

This book aims to present an account of legal translation between English and Arabic. The primary objective, therefore, is to analyse the common features of legal discourse in both languages, be they lexical, syntactic, or textual. Analysing the features of legal Arabic; contrasting them with the features of legal English is a pioneering step in the study of legal discourse. Such a comparison will help us come up with a list of the similarities and differences between both languages. This paves the way to figuring out the common difficult linguistic areas that a translator needs to consider when translating legal discourse between both languages. In undertaking this investigation the book offers a broad set of topics that will benefit many readers such as contrastive linguists, researchers undertaking contrastive English/Arabic research, researchers in the field of translation in general and in legal translation in particular, translation professionals and academics who are teaching translation modules for undergraduate and postgraduate students. These are the topics that the book offers:

• a brief account of the historical background of legal translation and its presentation in the literature

• a thorough account of the features of English and Arabic legal discourse supported by corpus-analysis

• the similarities and differences between both languages with regard to legal discourse

• the differences between the two languages; with a focus on some of the common difficult areas (for example Shariʿah Law terms, archaic terms, modal auxiliaries among others)¹

• an investigation of how certain difficult areas have been rendered into the target text (TT).

I will adopt a contrastive approach to analyse the techniques used in translating an authentic Arabic–English–Arabic parallel corpus. The reason why I have chosen to analyse texts from both directions is two-fold: (i) to arrive at some reliable results and commonalities by looking at one element from both directions; (ii) if one looks at the translation from one direction, there is a possibility of the interference of the stylistic preferences from either language, so an attempt to avoid such a possibility is also in mind.

1.2 HYPOTHESIS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The underlying hypothesis for the study is that the mismatch between the features of English and Arabic legal discourse results in some problematic areas in legal translation from and to these two languages. This mismatch at the lexical and/or the syntactic levels requires certain techniques on the part of the translator. To check the validity of this hypothesis, we will attempt to answer the following research questions:

What are the features of English and Arabic legal texts?

What are the similarities and differences of English and Arabic legal texts?

What are the difficult areas of legal translation between English and Arabic legal texts?

What are the techniques for translating these difficult areas on the lexical and syntactic levels?

By answering the above questions, the book will draw some conclusions about the nature of legal discourse in Arabic compared to English and pave the way for more empirical and corpus-based studies in this field which incidentally is under researched.

1.3 RESEARCH ON THE PROBLEMS OF LEGAL TRANSLATION: A BRIEF REVIEW

Researchers have engaged in the study of legal translation such as Šarčević (1997), Alcaraz Varó and Hughes (2002), Mayoral Asensio (2003) and Cao (2007) among others. Šarčević (1997) presents an interdisciplinary study in law and translation theory, a study that is not bound to one specific language or legal system. Cao (2007) has investigated the difficulties of translating different types of legal texts such as private legal documents, domestic legislations and international legal instruments. Alcaraz Varó and Hughes (2002) have focused on pragmatic issues, such as problems of and ambiguities resulting from lack of correspondence between two or more languages and legal systems. Matulewska (2007) has compared English and Polish statutes and contracts. She has examined the problems connected with the Polish–English and English–Polish translation of the texts belonging to a big variety of legal subtypes. Mayoral Asensio (2003) has tackled the translation of official documents from English into Spanish. In the field of English–Arabic translation, Alwazna (2013a) has written Translating Ḥanbalī Sharīʿa Code from Arabic into English: The Books of ‘Sale’, ‘Hire’ and ‘Loan’ in Majallat al-Aḥkām al-Sharʿiyya by al-Qārī (died in 1359 H/1940 AD). The book discusses issues in the Arabic source text, such as the transformation of the lan-guage of juristic Islamic texts into legal codes. It also analyses the translation problems of this particular text into English. In 2013b, Alwazna has discussed the translation of Islamic legal terms into English.

Nevertheless, the features of legal Arabic and the difficulties of legal translation between Arabic and English are under researched. Emery (1989) wrote an article on the features of Arabic legal discourse. Al-Bainy (2002) has referred, in one chapter of his Ph.D. thesis, to additions and omissions in some Arabic–English official legal texts. Lack of English/Arabic legal translation research may be attributed to the complex nature of the subject matter. It is challenging to undertake research in an area that has long been neglected. This book, however, will be considered a point of departure towards investigating this subject in a bit more depth for future research, applying more approaches and advanced tools such as corpus-based translation tools.

1.4 METHODOLOGY

As has been stated in the research questions, this study will account for the similarities and differences between English and Arabic legal language and contrastive linguistic analysis will be used as a preliminary stage leading to defining the most common lexical and syntactic mismatches. Hence, we will establish the difficult aspects of legal translation.

For the data analysis, the study adopts the Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) contrastive analysis approach. This will help in highlighting the techniques used in translating authentic Arabic–English–Arabic parallel corpus. ‘Techniques of adaptation’ cited in Alcaraz Varó and Hughes (2002) will be useful tools for the methodology proposed above as they have been applied for translating legal documents. Mona Baker’s (1992) levels of equivalence will also add value to the method.

As the preliminary stage of the data analysis, I have presented alignment Arabic–English–Arabic tables which give the ST/TT parallel examples along with the technique of translation. The actual analysis itself, either on the lexical or the syntactic level, will be divided into two stages, the first of which is quantitative where I have provided simple statistical analysis. This helps to highlight the techniques used to translate the specified difficult areas. The second phase provides a qualitative critical analysis in which I will critically comment on the techniques used for translating the specified difficult elements and provide interpretation and/or suggestions for the problematic areas when possible. It is worth mentioning that at the end of the practical chapters that deal with data analysis, some practical exercises will be included. They will benefit postgraduate translation students, translation academics and professionals, hence will help them relate theory to practice, reflect on and discuss what they have learnt in the practical chapters.

1.5 DATA ANALYSIS

Various texts either in English or in Arabic will be used to analyse the features of English and Arabic legal discourse. For the purpose of analysing some difficult areas in Arabic–English–Arabic legal translation (for example religious, culture-specific and system-based terms; archaic terms; passivization and modal auxiliaries), I have chosen a corpus of parallel documents of three legal subtypes, namely: international (for example the UN documents) legislative (constitutions and statutes) and official documents (for example certificates).²

1.6 STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

This book consists of seven chapters which are summarized below:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1 presents an outline of the book: rationale, methodology, data analysis and finally a summary of the chapters.

Chapter 2: English and Arabic legal discourse and legal translation

Chapter 2 gives a brief account of English and Arabic legal discourse. I also attempt in this chapter to review the approaches of legal translation in the Western tradition and establish the link between legal translation and the most common approaches followed in general translation theory in the twentieth century. One can argue that there was no specific legal translation theory as such and that it was linked to the theories of the time (for example linguistic theories). There has since been a shift in approaching legal translation with the lawyers and theorists becoming more sceptical about the reliance on equivalence and linguistic-based theories of legal translation and they have attempted to introduce other function-based theories such as the skopos theory and the text type theory. The chapter concludes with listing the subtypes of legal discourse which paves the way for Chapter 3.

Chapter 3: Features of English and Arabic legal discourse

Chapter 3 investigates the semantic, grammatical and textual features of legal discourse in English and Arabic. Such an analysis is based on sample texts of different legal subtypes. These texts include authentic published documents and others obtained from law professionals such as legislations, constitutions, contracts, court reports.

The aim of analyzing the features of English and Arabic legal language is to establish the similarities and differences between them, hence, identify the difficult linguistic areas that a translator is likely to face. At the end of this chapter, some practical exercises will be included to help the readers compare, discuss and analyze the features of legal English and Arabic. This will help them figure out the commonalities and differences between both languages and prepare them for Chapter 4.

Chapter 4: Framework for data analysis

Chapter 4 deals with the methodology for the analysis of data. It falls into three parts, the first of which starts with listing the relevant translation models that will provide tools for data analysis. These models include Vinay and Darbelnet (1995), the techniques of adaptation cited in Alcaraz Varó and Hughes (2002) and levels of equivalence cited in Baker (1992). It also introduces a contrastive study of the areas of difference between English and Arabic (for example modal auxiliaries and passive structures). The second part will explain the two-stage framework (both the quantitative and the qualitative analysis). The third part lists the documents which will be investigated in Chapters 5 and 6.

Chapter 5: Analysis of Arabic–English–Arabic texts: the lexical level

Chapter 5 aims to provide a contrastive analysis of the difficult areas on the lexical level from Arabic into English and vice-versa with reference to three legal subtypes, namely: international, legislative and official. These elements include religious (for example Shariʿah Law terms), culture-specific and system-based terms (for example civil partnership terms) and archaic terms. Some practical exercises are included at the end of the chapter to help the readers practice and app...