CC BY
71YffR 811.111-26 EEK 80
DOI: 10.24411/2658-5138-2020-10005
THE PECULIARITIES OF LEGAL COMMUNICATION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Svetlana Yu. Maksimova, ORCID: 0000-0003-4277-8446, Candidate of Philology, Associate professor of the English Language Department, Saratov State Law Academy, 1, Volskaya Str., Saratov, 410056, Russia, [email protected]
Ksenia V. Matsyupa, ORCID: 0000-0002-6388-5120, Candidate of Philology, Associate professor of the English Language Department, Saratov State Law Academy, 1, Volskaya Str., Saratov, 410056, Russia, [email protected]
Abstract: The article touches upon the issue of peculiarities of legal language, in general and legal translation, in particular. The interaction of linguistics and jurisprudence is necessary for solving a great variety of problems, which require both linguistic and legal knowledge, because language is the primary tool for formulating legal categories. In the context of the current increase in legal awareness and the extremely wide discussion of legal issues, the research of developing and improving both language and foreign-language skills is of particular importance. Lawyers have a practical need to improve the skills of legal communication (both written and oral). Competent legal translation requires excellent knowledge in the spheres of law, current legislation, features of legally binding arrangement and correct use of legal terminology etc. The purpose: to review the essential features of legal language, to examine the peculiarities of foreign-language professional communication in the spheres of law and to give brief analysis of issues related to legal translation. The methodological basis: theoretical research of legal language features, linguistic observation and linguistic analysis of professional communication in the sphere of law, linguistic analysis of legal translation. Results: on the basis of theoretical studies, linguistic and interpretive analysis of certain features of legal language were discussed, the peculiarities of legal communication in foreign languages were analyzed, and brief analysis of issues related to legal translation was given.
Keywords: legal language, legal translation, legal documents, cross-cultural professional communication, legal terminology, legal realities, international co-operation of lawyers, domestic and foreign relations, legal assessment.
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ОСОБЕННОСТИ ЮРИДИЧЕСКОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ НА ИНОСТРАННЫХ ЯЗЫКАХ
С.Ю. Максимова, кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры английского языка, Саратовская государственная юридическая академия, [email protected]
К.В. Мацюпа, кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры английского языка, Саратовская государственная юридическая академия, [email protected]
Аннотация: В статье затрагивается вопрос об особенностях юридического языка в целом и юридического перевода в частности. Взаимодействие лингвистики и юриспруденции необходимо для решения самых разнообразных проблем, требующих как лингвистических, так и юридических знаний, поскольку язык является основным инструментом формулирования правовых категорий. В условиях нынешнего роста правосознания и чрезвычайно широкого обсуждения правовых вопросов особое значение приобретает исследование развития и совершенствования как языковых, так и иноязычных навыков. Юристы испытывают практическую потребность в совершенствовании навыков юридического общения (как письменного, так и устного). Современный юридический перевод требует отличных знаний в области права, действующего законодательства, особенностей юридически обязательного оформления и правильного использования юридической терминологии и т.д. Цель: рассмотреть сущностные особенности юридического языка, рассмотреть особенности иноязычного профессионального общения в сфере права и дать краткий анализ вопросов, связанных с юридическим переводом. Методологическая основа: теоретическое исследование особенностей юридического языка, лингвистическое наблюдение и лингвистический анализ профессиональной коммуникации в сфере права, лингвистический анализ юридического перевода. Результаты: на основе теоретических исследований был проведен лингвистический и интерпретационный анализ отдельных особенностей юридического языка, проанализированы особенности юридической коммуникации на иностранных языках, дан краткий анализ вопросов, связанных с юридическим переводом.
Ключевые слова: юридический язык, юридический перевод, юридические документы, межкультурная профессиональная коммуникация, юридическая терминология, правовые реалии, международное сотрудничество юристов, внутренние и внешние отношения, правовая оценка.
The legal aspect of language is significant for linguistics, because it is the law that regulates the use of language, the relationship between languages, estab-
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lishes the status of language. Expressing the will of the legislature, the language brings this will to the public; it is directly in contact with the law. Legal regulation of society includes the use of language to mediate political, social, economic and other relations in law. It is language as a means of legal writing and law application that ensures the functioning of the state and its institutions. Thus, the synthesis of linguistics and jurisprudence is necessary to solve many problems that require both linguistic and legal knowledge, since language is the only means for development of legal concepts.
The specific functioning of language in the sphere of law is manifested in the sphere of legal activity (e.g. expert review of bills), interpretation of laws, in the regulation of sociolinguistic domestic and foreign relations. [6: 157-162].
Interpretation and perception of the law is mediated by the text, the quality of presentation of which depends on the understanding of the will of the legislature, and hence the effectiveness of its implementation. Logic, precision, conciseness and strict unambiguity are features of the language of law.
Lawyers should strictly follow the generally accepted rules of drafting legal documents and observe the linguistic and stylistic conventions of legal communication, both written and oral.
Governing meaning of law depends largely on the expressiveness of the language in which laws, regulations, decrees, etc. are written. At the same time, lawyers should take into account that all legal documents must be emotionally neutral. Even the most extraordinary events and facts should be described by a lawyer in neutral terms, without any disclosure of the lawyer's legal assessment. [3: 65-80].
Unfortunately, some lawyers do not pay enough attention to issues related to the improvement of the presentation of regulations and unjustifiably neglect the language of legal documents, which often leads to the misuse of words, semantic and syntactic redundancy, and even grammatical and punctuation errors. For example, "active repentance" is impossible, because repentance is not an action, but a process of awareness of one's guilt, and any actions will be a consequence of repentance, and not part of it. Therefore, it is appropriate to speak of "actions as a result of repentance." [5]
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The phrase "regulation of legal relations" is also absurd from a legal point of view, because the relationship is already "settled law, social relation, whose members are carriers of subjective rights and duties." The use of the term "regulation of public relations" is appropriate here.
Legal documents often contain many sentences consisting hundreds of words, e.g.: "Ensuring public safety - from the point of view of implementation of powers which are in joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and its subjects -requires mutually agreed efforts of the Federal center and the regions aimed at protecting the material and intangible socially significant benefits of man and society as a whole, which, in turn, involves the state-power, including forced, elimination of factors that pose a threat to society and the person, life, health or property of citizens." [7] Or, "A decision taken at the local level may be annulled ...or invalidated by a court in the manner prescribed by law". These examples demonstrate mistaken opinion of lawyers that if an entire idea is expressed in one but complicated sentence it would be easier to understand. Complicated phrases include compound sentences, which often leads to distortion of the meaning of the legal document.
But, it is important not to go to the other extreme and split the text into many short, simple sentences. It is important to remember that the main purpose of a legal document is its clarity, not brevity for the sake of its clarity. As for understanding the content of a document, psycholinguists have shown that the typical reader or listener can hold only a few thoughts in his or her short-term memory.
Since the language of legal documents uses specialized vocabulary, lawyers should remember that the use of any words should be clear, accurate and of course, relevant. As the reader may know, human speech in real life is unique. Statements constitute a person's verbal speech portrait. [2: 102-107]. And for the sake of giving their statements greater importance, lawyers 'clog' their speech with foreign words.
However, the abundance of foreign words in the speech of a jurist is not an indicator of his or her linguistic and cultural competence. On the contrary, it should be kept in mind that language is appropriate in one situation is completely
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unsuitable in another. If there are Russian equivalents, the writer should not abuse foreign vocabulary. For example, the following equivalents are possible alternatives: volunteer - доброволец; defect - недостаток; dominate -господствовать; doctrine - учение; limit - ограничение; adapt -приспособить; force - ускорить; transportation - доставка; etc. [10]
It is also necessary to take into account that the interpretation of a legal document may distort its true meaning, if the document contains ordinary, everyday expressions: cf.: driving a car drunk - driving a vehicle while intoxicated; a company of people drank in the park - a group of people drank alcohol in a public place, etc.
Thus, legal scholars should contribute to improving the legal framework of state and public life, ensuring strict compliance with law and order by analyzing and solving issues at the intersection of jurisprudence and linguistics. This will ultimately lead to an improvement in the quality of language in which laws are expressed. [8: 156-163]. The above arguments inevitably lead to the conclusion that close cooperation of lawyers and linguists is extremely important for solving problems of both linguistic and legal nature, since language is the main tool for passing information, legal writing, law application and development of legal concepts.
The development of science, intensive exchange of scientific and technical information, and the cooperation of states in the process of development of mutually beneficial projects is impossible without effective communication of professionals. In other words, intercultural communication has a special place in current conditions of educational and professional globalization. In the context of the development of legal culture and a wide discussion of legal issues, it is extremely relevant to study the problems of improvement of both language and foreign language communicative competence.
According to E. Vyushkina "Law application and expert consulting activity of a lawyer is unthinkable without dialogue and / or negotiations, conflict resolution, discussion and drafting of contracts and business correspondence. Moreover, highly qualified specialists should have the skills of business communication, both in their native and foreign languages". [9: 54-58].
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Indeed, in the context of intensive international cooperation in general, and in the field of law in particular, it is necessary to substantially improve the professional training of law students in English. We fully agree with V. Aitov, who proposed an exhaustive definition of "foreign language professional competence", as well as clearly formulated its purpose: foreign language professional communicative competence is "the readiness and ability of a specialist who has not studied a foreign language at the language faculty, to apply foreign language scientific and subject knowledge for the implementation of full-fledged foreign language professional cross-cultural communication." [1: 48].
But, despite the obvious need to acquire and improve intercultural communication skills, both written and oral, most lawyers demonstrate an extremely low level of foreign language competence. This can be explained by the following factors: 1) insufficient number of academic hours of a foreign language in law schools; 2) lack of motivation for most law students to study a foreign language, since a foreign language is not a major subject; 3) the difficulty of drafting unified educational and methodological techniques for teaching foreign languages to law students, which is due to the different level of their language training in secondary schools.
A modern lawyer with a high level of foreign language competence is able to use international legal resources, work with international legislative databases, communicate with foreign colleagues, conduct business correspondence, publish in international legal publications, and competently use a modern computer and communication technologies.
Another, quite strong argument in favor of improving language skills is mandatory publication of academic research in the international citation systems, WEB of SCIENCE (WOS) and SCOPUS, whose indices are recognized worldwide, which, in turn, are indicators of the works' 'importance'. The list of requirements for such publication includes the necessary translation of the article and all its output data into English.
In other words, lawyers have a practical need to improve skills of legal translation (both oral and written). And this is not a simple and unambiguous task
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as it may seem at first glance. In fairness, it should be noted that legal translation is one of the most complex types of translation. It is in the translation of legal texts that the differences between legal systems are fully revealed, and the larger they are, the greater the incompatibility.
Thus, a competent professional legal translation requires extensive knowledge in law, current legislation, the specific use of legal terminology, etc., because each country has its own system of law, legal terminology and practical applications.
The existence of so-called legal synonyms (legal terms that have similar and at the same time fundamentally different meanings) makes process of translation difficult. For example, the most difficult is the translation of the following terms: solicitor, barrister, attorney, counsel, lawyer, since any dictionary offers the same Russian-language meanings: адвокат, юрист, представитель. And, if one uses only the meanings offered by the dictionary or simply trusts a translation program, the translation of the sentence: ".Lawyers in Great Britain are strictly divided into solicitors and barristers", would be as follows: ".Юристы (адвокаты) в Великобритании делятся строго на юристов (адвокатов) и юристов (адвокатов)", which is meaningless in Russian and can be called Abracadabra.
Translation of the term Attorney General also has a number of incorrect variants, such as - Адвокат Генерал, Генеральный Адвокат, etc., although, in accordance with the realities Attorney General means the principal legal officer who represents the Crown or a state in legal proceedings (in England); the head of the US Department of Justice (in the United States). Another group of legal synonyms, law, statute, rule, right, regulation, legislation means 'law', but they are all different terms in meaning. The legal term убийство also has a great number of synonyms in English: murder, homicide, manslaughter, assassination, killing. Therefore, when translating legal synonyms one should take into account the context in which they are used and one should have at hand reliable and comprehensive sources of information, such as - legal dictionaries.
Another example of the difference in legal realities is the term понятой, which is translated into English as witness. But, since the concept of понятой is
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absent in the Anglo-American legal system, any English-speaking lawyer will translate witness as свидетель, which will lead to distortion of the meaning of the phrase "Обыск проводился в присутствии понятых", because for a Russian lawyer the terms свидетель and понятой have completely different meanings.
And, likewise, there are terms of art that denote the realities of American justice, which do not have equivalents in the Russian legal system: plea / charge bargaining, plea bargain - сделка о признании вины или судебный торг. To avoid misinterpretation, such a translation will undoubtedly need comment and clarification that judicial bargaining is a pre-trial negotiation between the prosecutor and the lawyers of the accused to plead guilty, in order to obtain a lighter sentence and avoid trial.
An incorrect translation at best can lead to curiosities. An example of this is the story when Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov was presented the box with the button 'RESET, which was supposed to be a symbol of the reset of Russian-American relations, but the incident was that the American translators gave the Russian translation "ПЕРЕГРУЗКА (overload)", which radically changed the meaning of the event.
In the worst case, inadequate translation can lead to or aggravate conflict (including international). Khrushchev's emotional statement at the meeting with the American delegation "Я вам покажу Кузькину мать" was translated literally "Kuzma's mother" The translation of this phrase put the Americans in a difficult position: Khrushchev is going to show them the mother of some Kuzma?! And all would be funny if this threat did not become ominous when in 1961 the USSR tested the most powerful hydrogen bomb in the history of mankind. It was then that the Americans decided what kind of "Kuzma's mother" was in question, which increased the hostile mood of both states.
By famous phrase, "We will bury you", Khrushchev did not make a physical threat. Instead, he meant the inevitable victory of socialism over capitalism; but taken out of context, translation of this phrase was taken by the West "as a nuclear threat" [4: 157]. As we can see, even the slightest error in the translation of po-
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litical statements or legal texts can lead to unpredictable and even disastrous consequences.
Ambiguity in the field of law is no less dangerous. Most often, ambiguity at the level of vocabulary occurs when common words are given a legal meaning, e.g., sentence - предложение - (leg.) приговор, наказание; case - коробка, чемодан - (leg.) дело; suit - костюм; (leg.) - иск, судебная тяжба; fine -отлично, прекрасно; (leg.) - штраф; bar - бар, прилавок; - (leg.) адвокатура, коллегия адвокатов.
When translating legal texts, one should not be too arrogant, because so-called false friends of the translator, or interlingual homonyms, or deceptive cognates (a pair of words in two languages, similar in spelling and / or pronunciation, but different in meaning) can radically change the meaning of the original and mislead. Let's consider some of them: camera - judge's cabinet, not prison cell (камера); to be called to the bar - to obtain the right to legal practice, not be invited to the bar for drinking alcohol (бар); heroine - a female character, not narcotic (героин); mayor - the head of a city (мэр), not an officer (майор); parole -release of a prisoner before the expiry of a sentence, not password (пароль); tort -a civil offence, not a cake (торт).
In conclusion, we would like to note that the practice of exchanging information and experience between lawyers has already become transnational. Illegal drug and arms trafficking, human trafficking, the fight against international terrorism, and financial and economic crimes have led to the development of intensive international cooperation of lawyers.
Under current conditions, legal translations should be handled by specialists with the appropriate level of training. This is possible only if translators become professionals in law or if lawyers obtain a linguistic education. Unfortunately, there are very few lawyers specializing in the translation of legal texts, as they devote most of their time to the study of legal disciplines and therefore in most cases do not have the skills to translate legal texts. We see the solution to this problem in close cooperation between lawyers and linguists. Only in this tandem legal transla-
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tion will become professional with preservation of the spirit of the language (its internal form), with regard to lexical details and nuances of legal documentation.
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© Максимова С.Ю., Мацюпа К.В.
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