NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENT NGUYEN THU ANH A STUDY ON TRANSLATION OF LEGAL LANGUAGE IN INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENT NGUYEN THU ANH A STUDY ON TRANSLATION OF LEGAL LANGUAGE IN INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS Hanoi, May, 2020 Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my very great appreciation to my supervisor, Mrs. Tran Thi Thu Giang, M.A of Business English department who has always been giving valuable guidance and helpful suggestions from the preparation to the completion of this research. Thanks to her detailed comments, I can successfully complete this research. In addition, I am also sincerely grateful to senior students in department of Business English and some other translators for the assistance in answering my questionnaire.
Lastly, I feel particularly thankful to my friends and my parents, whose encouragement as well as support make a great contribution to the completion of my research. Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A EXCUTIVE SUMMARY It is undeniable that translation is becoming more and more important. In the international market, translation plays a vital role in connecting partners from all over the world, especially in contracts. Legal English is of great importance in translating international commercial contracts.
However, to be proficient in translation demands a variety of skills and a wide understanding of knowledge. This research is conducted to help seniors of Business English discover the difficulties in translating commercial contracts from English to Vietnamese and recommend some solutions to overcome the identified problems. Questionnaire includes a list of questions about how much students know about legal language, their attitude toward legal language, their difficulties while translating commercial contracts and how they deal with these problems. These questions are designed in online form and have nearly 50 senior students of Business English taking part in.
After that, all the answers are collected, basing on the raw data, the researcher focuses on analyzing figures in order to give out suitable suggestions. The result of the study indicates that legal language is quite unfamiliar to most of the seniors of Business English department because they do not have chance to translate these terms. Consequently, a number of students have difficulties in translating legal language. A student frequently faces with more than one problem.
The main reason is the lack of legal vocabulary since legal terms are obliviously abundant. It takes lots of times and effort to learn and enhance. With the aims at assisting students in becoming better in translating legal language, the research has suggested some appropriate recommendations such as updating more information about legal system of many countries, taking note to memorize many types of legal terms as well as practice as much as possible. Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS NO.
|ABBREVIATION 1 SL Source language TL Target language li Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A LIST OF TABLES No. Name of table 1 Examples of legal language translation iii Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A LIST OF FIGURES No. Name of figures 01 The popularity of the term “legal language”. 02 The frequency of one person translating commercial contracts 03 Opinions about the difficulty in translating legal language 04 Difficulties in translating legal language in international commercial contracts 05 Frequency of facing with problems when translating legal language 06 Frequency of applying methods when having difficulties in translating legal language iv Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A TABLE OF CONTENTS EXCUTIVE SUMMARY 011 .-- LH TT HH nh 1 2.
Purpose Of the SfUdy.-- HH TT HH HH Hiện 2 3. Research Qu€stOI. HT TH HH HH 2 CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.- 0 ẶS St se irey 4 1. Definition of tranSÏafIOII.- -- s11 vn ng rkt 4 1.
Methods of transÏafIOT.- c- 5 s1 vn HH TH nh Hàng 4 1. Word-for-word transÏatiOT. «xxx ng ng nhớt 5 1. Semantic transÌÏafIOIA.- -- + + k9 ng HH như 5 1.- 5 «xxx 9n TH nghệ 6 1.
s1 11H nh ng nh 6 1. 5 5 1 E21 93 9 1 9 2v vn nh ni 6 1. Equivalence in trannSÏafIOTI. Definition of eQu1VaÏ€TICG.
Types of equivalence in tranSÏatiOT.-- -- 5 2s + sxk+sskEseesseesrek 7 Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A 2. Theory of Legal English lanEUÿ€. Concept of legal English language. Characteristics of legal English language.
Synonyms and near SYROTVTTS. Complex S€If€TCGS.- Ăn S9 HT TH nh nh rệt 11 2. Application of methods and equivalence in translating legal documents. SG TH TH ng 12 CHAPTER II: OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS ¬—-.
Definition of international commercial COnIfFACfS. Structure of a commercial CONUIACt. The names and addresses of the DATI€S. - -- 5 2c 3+ kEsseseeeseeresee 14 "No nh.
Representations and WATTATILICS. --- s39 vn HH giết 16 2.G- Gv HH HH như, 16 2. 17 Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A 3.Examples of International Commercial COnTACfS.- --- -- 5+2 *+2£++£+eeseeeseses 17 CHAPTER III: ANALYSIS AND DICUSSION. Overview of the term “legal languaØ€””.
- -- cv vn ng ri 21 2. Difficulties in translating legal lanEØ©. Methods to translate legal lanØUØ€. Summary of difficulties and their CaUS€S.- 5 6 5 +2 **+vE+vEsessrserreree 29 CHAPTER IV: RECOMMENDATION .- Ác Là ng ghe, 30 1.
Frequently updating information and reading books. Creating habit of taking notes NeW WOTS .- 5 cv HH ni ey 30 3. Practicing as much 8. 34 APPENDIX I APPENDIX 2 vi Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale Due to the current globalization trend and the opening and growing of the economic market, more and more businesses are expanding their businesses outside the region. Because of the increasing demand for expanding markets abroad, translation plays an important role for businesses when they cooperate with each other in the international market. In an integrated economy, translation is even more important. Most fields such as construction, healthcare, finance, tourism use specialized materials in both Vietnamese and foreign languages.
With the trend of international economic integration, translation services for business and cultural exchange are extremely essential. Furthermore, translation services play a vital role in cooperation with international partners. Translation is an important factor to associate organizations in worldwide economy, so businesses must have cooperation with a translation service to support them when needed. It is both unifying and enhancing the brand of the business in the eyes of the partners.
Especially, translation on legal language in international commercial contracts is an interesting but challenging translation area. However, in Vietnam, translation of the above-mentioned majors has not received special attention at universities. The complexity and difficulties in process of translating legal English require numerous skills and understanding to translate specialized terms. Legal documents, or international commercial contracts, are contexts containing many specialized legal terms, which are required to read, understand, analyze and translate.
It is also involved deep knowledge of the law system, with extensive work experience in the international environment. Translation of legal documents, international commercial contracts from foreign partners demands accurate translation skills, knowledge of the law and an abundance of specialized terminology. Legal English is defined by peculiar characteristics that are not frequently seen in daily English. Some features are regarded as obstacles for translators to comprehend and translate legal documents.
Out of all kinds of legal contexts, commercial contracts employ a great number of certain features, along with specified others to this type. This study investigates the characteristics of legal Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A language leading to some problems in the translation of international commercial contracts. Purpose of the study My study aims at: - Giving a brief view of translation, characteristics of legal language term and international commercial contracts - Finding out difficulties when translating legal language in international commercial contracts. - Suggesting some necessary techniques for better translation in commercial contracts 3.
Scope of the study The term “legal English” takes translators a great deal of time and effort to conduct a research. However, because of my shortage of time and knowledge, the research is limited to the nature of translation and a variety of aspects of legal language. Based on that, it focuses on the exploration of difficulties encountered by translators when translating commercial contracts. Research question With the aims at achieving the goal of the study, the following research questions have to be taken into considered: - What are the characteristics of legal English language? - What are the difficulties that Vietnamese encounter when translating legal documents from English into Vietnamese? - What should be done to overcome the identified problems? 5.
Methodology s* Questionnaires - Step 1: Create a questionnaire containing some questions such as how much senior students know about the term “legal language”, what difficulties translators have in translating legal language, how they do to deal with those problems, and ask them to give some recommendations and more. - Step 2: Give sample questionnaire to at least five students to find out whether the questionnaire is effective or not. - Step 3: Improve the quality of the questionnaire and hand it out to 50 final- year students in Business English department and 2 more translators who are working in the import and export trade. Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A - Step 4: Data processing: Find out e The most difficulties students have while translating.
e How often students get problem e The method they use most when having difficulties - Step 5: Give some recommendations to improve the situation Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. Definition of translation Translation is widely known as transferring from a language to another language. In particularly, the main duty of a translator is to transfer various kinds of text related to education, business, politics, culture and technology from SL (source language) to equivalent TL (target language). In other words, it is to make a number of documents worldwide, as a result, more and more readers can access to them.
There are numerous definitions of translation due to individual view of each expert. Newmark (1981) states that “translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statements in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language”. From different aspect, Nida and Taber (1982) demonstrates that “translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message”. On the other hand, Houbert (1998) defines translation as “the process whereby a message expressed in a specific source language is linguistically transformed in order to be understood by readers of the target language”.
According to Hatim and Mason (1997), “translation is an act of communication which attempts to relay, across cultural and linguistic boundaries, another act of communication”’. Methods of translation According to Newmark (1988), translation methods are divided into eight types: 1. Word-for-word translation This kind of method is described as the transferring with the TL directly below the SL without conveying the meaning of the context. Every word is translated separately by the most popular meaning.
Besides, the word order of the original text is preserved. Example: SL: Her father takes her to school every morning. TL: Bố cô ấy đưa cô ấy đến trường mỗi sáng. Nguyễn Thu Anh — 11160342 — Business English 58A 1.
Literal translation For literal translation, each translated word has a common meaning, but the primary meanings may differ. The grammatical structure of origin is converted to their nearest equivalents, but the lexical words are translated separately, out of context. Newmark agrees that “this technique is the best option for translating texts where the form is as important as the content such as great speeches, autobiographies, literary works”.