AKADEMIA
HUMANISTYCZNO–EKONOMICZNA
W ŁODZI
WYDZIAŁ: HUMANISTYCZNY
Przyjmuję pracę jako magisterską (II stopnia)
(w wersji papierowej i elektronicznej)
podpis promotora..............................................................
data ....................................................................................................
dr Wiesławy Ferlackiej
Table of contents
Table of contents 3
Introduction 5
Chapter 1: Theory of translation 6
1.1. What is translation? 6
1.2. Translator’s arsenal 7
1.3. Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation techniques 8
1.4. Ivir’s procedures for the translation of culture-bound items 9
1.5. Newmark’s procedures 10
1.6. Standardized and ‘free’ translation 11
1.7. The translator as a linguist, artist, intermediary and rewriter (source) 12
Chapter 2: Legal translation 14
2.1. Law and legal language as a specialized one 14
2.2. Specificity of law and legal translations 14
2.3. Legal vocabulary and its specificity 14
2.4. Basic terminological problems 14
2.5. Difficulties in Polish-English translations 14
2.6. Different meaning of Polish and British legal vocabulary 14
2.7. Appropriate paragraphing, style and register of translated legal text 14
Chapter 3: Comparison of three commercial English translations of ‘Kodeks Spółek Handlowych” 15
List of tables
Table 1. Sample table. 8
Introduction
The intension of this work is to present different aspects of translators’ work. This subject was taken up to gain and develop general knowledge about translation and especially the translation of legal texts. The aim of this thesis is to provide a piece of advice to the readers, that already are or want to become professional legal translators.
The text that is analysed in this thesis is “Kodeks Spółek Handlowych” - a Polish legal document translated into English by three different publishers. In this work these translation are compared and the special focus is put on the most problematic mistranslations found. The texts are compared and the most suitable is chosen or, if none is adequate, the most suitable, subjective translation is stated by the author.
Due to the differences between the Polish law (based on continental law) and the Anglo-Saxon law (based on the common law and individual legal acts) this thesis finds the key trap-like, ambiguous lexico‑grammatical items that will be highlighted in the analytical part of this thesis.
This M.A. thesis consists of three parts. Chapter One provides…. Chapter Two discusses… while Chapter Three …
Chapter One: Theory of translation
The intention of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the basic definition of translation. I will present the methods by which the text may be translated. These will be used in the third chapter of this thesis that refers in its analysis to the translation techniques described herein.
The difference between ‘standardized’ and ‘free’ translation (source) is taken into consideration to give a closer look at the matter on how the formal and informal documents should be translated.
The professional translator, while transforming the text from one language into another, should also be aware of its role as a linguist, artist, intermediary and rewriter (source) to adequately transform the text to make it more clear for the target reader, which is characterized in this chapter as well.
1.1. What is translation?
To begin with, one should focus on what translation is not. Definitely it is not rewriting one word from one (so called ‘source’) language to another (‘target’) language. If it were so, the role of translators would have already been taken by computers a long time ago (source of wisdom J pls). Words happen to be ambiguous as theynd refer to the some specific context. The same wordy may have different functions in different cultures and may not have the exact equivalents in the target language (source). Translation can must not be taken into consideration on the level of sentences, either, because they obey different grammar rules according to the language. Copying it directly is pointless due to the fact that often some grammatical structures in the source language are substituted by a distinct form of the target language
unclear
(source).
The essence of translation is certainly in transforming of ‘what the author had in mind while writing the text’(source or accusing you of plagiarism). Translation is focused on the meaning of a text and not the rather than form (source) of it.
(1) Probably the most adequate definition of translation was stated by Peter Newmark (1982: 7) who claimed that “the translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language”.
(2)
(3) Translator’s arsenal
1.2. FULL STOP
(4)
As mentioned above, the clue of translation is to give out the sense of a text in the most faithful way in another language. The process of this conversion leaves a number of methods to manipulate the text to make it more clear for the reader. Some of these methods from “the translator’s arsenal” (Belczyk 2004: 11-27) are described below.
(5) ‘Linking’ is combining many short sentences into one longer.
(6) ‘Dividing’ relies on parting long sentences (sometimes made of complex grammatical structures) into shorter with the use of a comma or a semicolon.
(7) ‘Generalizing’ is used when an ambiguity of a phrase may be generalized by choosing one particular meaning of it, however, one should be careful to choose the adequate meaning that would follow the point stated by the author. The best way to avoid the ambiguities is to form the sentence in a way that leaves the interpretation to the reader.
(8) ‘Word shifting’ is used due to the fact that usually there are different grammatical rules in different languages and the word order as well as the syntax may differ, it is common rule that the process of translation goes together with shifting the words within the sentence.
(9)
(10) ‘Replacing’ is applied when the translated sentence does not fit the whole text stylistically due to i.e.
i.e. does not mean e.g.! J It’s a mistake!
(11) word repetition. A good translator will in such a case re-edit the text and express the same idea in different words. What is noticeable, English words good, small, short, etc. are usually translated into Polish with a lot of caution: niezły, nieduży, niedługi. ex. There’s good restaurant – Tam jest niezła restauracja..
(12)
(13) ‘Erasing’ and ‘simplifying’ are used when the
Be more careful, pls
(14) t...
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