LEXICAL AND SYNTAX FEATURES OF ENGLISH AND ARABIC LEGAL DISCOURSE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

• Authors: Hanem EL-FARAHATY

Title variants

PL

CECHY ANGIELSKIEGO I ARABSKIEGO DYSKURSU PRAWNEGO I PRAWNICZEGO

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper discusses the common lexical and grammatical features of legal discourse inEnglish and Arabic.6 The rationale behind this analysis is to compare and contrast the discourse ofboth languages, list the similarities and differences between them and come up with the mostproblematic areas in legal translation. It is worth mentioning that features of Arabic legal discoursehave not been researched before, thus, I have taken the features of legal English as headlightsaccording to which I will analyze the corpus of Arabic legal documents. These features, however,are not specific to one particular type of written language of the law. By type of language is meantthe different types of legal texts such as legislations, contracts, official documents, courtproceedings, etc. For this purpose, authentic samples of different English and Arabic legaldocuments have been consulted. These texts, obtained from law professionals, include private legaldocuments such as tenancy agreements, employment contracts, correspondences between solicitorsand clients, reports to the court, birth certificates, and marriage certificates. Other documentsinclude selected legislative and international documents. To this effect, the United Nations (UN)website, other translation books such as Mansoor (1965), Hatim, Shunnaq and Buckley (1995) areconsulted.

PL

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie typowych leksykalnych i składniowych cech dyskursu prawnego w języku arabskim i angielskim. Cechy strylistyczne nie zostały uwzględnione w pracy. Autorka sokonuje anlizy porównawczo-kontrastywnej dyskursy prawniczego w obu analizowanych językach. W wyniku przeprowadznonej analizy zostaje opracowana list najbardziej kłopotliwych obszrów w przekładzie w ramach tej pary językowej. Należy tutaj podkreślić, że cechy prawniczego dyskursu w języku arabskim nie były do tej pory badane i z tego powodu za punkt wyjścia posłużyły szerzej opisane w literaturze cechy prawniczego języka angielskiego. Autorka zanalizowała autentyczne teksty z różnych gatunków obejmujące: umowy najmu/dzierżawy, umowy o pracę, korespondencję pomiędzy prawnikami i klientami, raporty przygotowywane na potzreby sądów, akty urodzenia i małżeństwa, a także wybrane dokumenty z zakreu prawa międzynarodowego.  

Keywords

EN

English; Arabic; legal discourse; comparative studies; legilinguistics

PL

dyskurs prawny; arabski; angielski; legilingwistyka; język prawny; prawniczy; dyskurs prawny; arabski; angielski; legilingwistyka; język prawny; prawniczy

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Comparative Legilinguistics
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 4
• Pages: 61-80

Dates

published

2010-06-01

Contributors

author

Hanem EL-FARAHATY

• Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies School of Modern Languages and Cultures University of Leeds LS2 9JT

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Identifiers

DOI

10.14746/cl.2010.4.6