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Ain Shams University Women's College for Arts, Science and Education Department of English Language and Literature
A Legal-Linguistic Analysis of Arabic Legal
Texts and their Translation into English: A Contrastive Stylistic Approach
A Thesis
Submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature
Women's College for Arts, Science and Education-
Ain Shams University
In Fulfillment of the Requirements for the M.A. Degree in
Linguistics
By Al-Shaymaa Salah Al-Sayed Mohammad Al-Kholy
Under the Supervision of:
Dr. Ahmed Shafik El-Khatib
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics Faculty of Languages and Translation
Al-Azhar University
And
Dr. Gihan Shafie El-Margoushy Associate Professor of English Literature Women's College, Ain Shams University
2013
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, al-ḥamdu lillāh, all Praise and thanks be to Allāh,
whose blessings upon us are countless.
Then, I am greatly indebted to my main supervisor, Professor 'Aḥmad
Šafīq Al-Ḫaṭīb, for making my work possible in the first place and for his
help and continued support. His valuable suggestions and constructive
criticism led to improving earlier versions of this thesis. Without his
patience, insightful comments and meticulous revision in various stages of
completion of this thesis, this work would have never been existed. So, I owe
special debt of gratitude to him for spending some of his precious time
revising this humble work. Really, I am very lucky to be one of his students.
I would also like to express my appreciation and gratitude to Professor
Ḥasan Waǧieh, for offering me the opportunity to carry out this research
under the name of Professor Al-Ḫaṭīb. Great thanks to every one in the
department of English Language and Translation, Al-Azhar University, a
department that includes highly valued, respectable and decent persons.
I am also deeply indebted to my co-supervisor, Associate Professor Ǧīhān
Al-Marǧūšī, for her support, kindness and helpfulness.
I would also like to pass a note of thanks to all those who helped in
providing me with many sources that have made this work much easier,
wishing them all the best in their careers.
Finally, yet importantly, no words can appropriately express my deepest
gratitude to my lovely family, husband, and my kids for their support,
encouragement and patience throughout the duration of this thesis.
ii
ABSTRACT
This study ventures into a thorough contrastive stylistic analysis of two
Arabic legal documents and their translation into English. It investigates the
stylistic features of the language of law, and how they are rendered from a
source into a target language without violating the overall meaning. Such
texts are analysed and compared in terms of their lexical, syntactic and
textual features. In order to achieve a satisfactory result in the field of
translating legal texts, the translators must have a good command of the
complexities of the legal style of the two different legal languages involved
in translation. Both stylistics and translation studies have the same aim, that
is, how to fulfill social communication with effective linguistic methods. In
the process of translation, it is necessary for the translator to deal with his
translation carefully in order to make the translation accord with the source
text in the aspect of style. Therefore, the linguistic stylistic analysis
concerning lexical, grammatical and textual features of the legal language
provides an opportunity for the legal translator to gain more insight into the
contrastive features between Arabic and English legal languages as well as
their respective stylistic features. It is also accepted that all varieties of
language use, whether literary or non-literary, have linguistic forms that are
subjected to empirical investigation (Fowler, 1966:16 as cited in Al-Zoubi
and Al-Hassnawi, 2001:14). Therefore, in stylistic analysis, items and
structures are isolated and described using descriptive frameworks drawn
from whatever school of descriptive linguistics the stylistician subscribes to
or finds most useful for a given purpose.
iii
List of Abbreviations
Full Form
Abbreviation
Source Language SL
Target Language TL
Source Language Text SLT
Target Language Text TLT
Source Text ST
Target Text TT
Descriptive Translation Studies DTS
Target-Oriented Approach TOA
Source-Oriented Theories SOT
Classical Arabic CA
Modern Standard Arabic MSA
iv
List of Transliteration Symbols
To facilitate the pronunciation of Arabic words appearing in the Arabic
texts, the following DIN 31635 Arabic transliteration system1 has been
consistently employed:
Letter (A) Transliteration Letter (E)
/hamzah/ /᾽/ أ /᾽b/ /bā/ ب /᾽t/ /tā/ ت /᾽ṯ/ /ṯā/ ث /ǧ/ /ǧīm/ ج /᾽ḥ/ /ḥā/ ح /᾽ḫ/ /ḫā/ خ /d/ /dāl/ د /ḏ/ /ḏāl/ ذ /᾽r/ /rā/ ر /z/ /zāy/ ز /s/ /sīn/ س /š/ /šīn/ ش /ṣ/ /ṣād/ ص /ḍ/ /ḍād/ ض /᾽ṭ/ /ṭā/ ط /᾽ẓ/ /ẓā/ ظ /ain῾/ /،/ ع /ġ/ /ġain/ غ /᾽f/ /fā/ ف /q/ /qāf/ ق /k/ /kāf/ ك /l/ /lām/ ل /m/ /mīm/ م
1Mohammed Abdel-Aal Attia, “Implications of the Agreement Features in Machine Translation”, an MA. Thesis, Al-Azhar University, 2002, p. vii. It is also available on: <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Arabic >
v
/n/ /nūn/ ن /᾽h/ /hā/ ه /w/ /wāw/ و /᾽y/ /yā/ ى
Short Vowels
/a/ /fatḥah/
/i/ /kasrah/
/u/ /ḍammah/
Long Vowels /ā/ /ī/ /ū/
Compound Vowels
/ai/ /aw/
The Arabic geminated consonants (i.e. Arabic letters with /šaddah/) are doubled.
/tā' marbūṭah/ as word-final /-h/ normally, or /-t/ in a word in the
construct state.
A hyphen /-/ is used to separate morphological elements, notably the article and prepositions.
This system may not conform to some Arabic names occurring in this
study, which have their own previously established transliterations.
This system is used by the researcher because it is simple in the sense that every Arabic letter is transliterated into only one symbol. The problem with that system is that some of the transliteration characters which carry diacritics either above or below, cannot be keyed directly on an ordinary keyboard.
vi
Table of Contents
Page
Acknowledgments…………………..........................................
Abstract………………………..……………………………….. List of Abbreviations……………………………………………….. Transliteration of Arabic Sounds ………………………………….. Introduction....................................................................................... Statement of the Problem………………………………………… Research Hypothesis………………………………….………… Research Aim…………………………….…………………… Research Questions……………………………………………. The Corpus………………………………………….………...… Presentation of Arabic Examples in the Study…………………….… The Methodology of the Study………….……………………... Significance of the Study……………………….………………. The Scope of the Study……………………………………….. Organisation of the Study………………………………………….….
Chapter One: Review of Literature………………….………...........
1.1. The History of Legal Translation …………………….............
1.1.1. The Language of the Law ……………………………..…...
1.1.2. Approaches to Legal Translation…………………….……
1.2. The Notion of Equivalence…………………………….........
1.3. Descriptive Translation Studies…………………..……….
1.3.1. Toury's Theory of Target-Oriented Approach (TOA)…….
1.3.2. Translation Norms………………………………….…..…
1.4. Contrastive Linguistics and the Theory of Translation………...…
1.5. Stylistics and Translation Theory…………………………..
1.6. Legal Register…………………...........................................
1.7. Stylistic Features of Legal Language …………..................
i
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1 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 6 7 7
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vii
Chapter Two: Lexical Features of Legal Language………..
2.1. The Gulf between Legal Language and Ordinary Language………..……
2.1.1. Dual Nature of Legislative Language ……………………...
2.2. The Lexical Features of Legalese………………….…..…….….
2.2.1. Legal Archaisms…………………….............................
2.2.1.1. Old and Medieval English Terms………………..
2.2.1.2. Latin and French Terms……………………………
2.2.2. Common Words with Uncommon Meaning………….…..
2.2.3. Frequent Use of Doublets and Triplets…………………..
2.2.4. Technical Terms……………………………………….…….
2.2.5. Deliberate Use of Vague Terms…………….………….
Chapter Three: Syntactic Features of Legal Language………
3.1. The Importance of Syntactic Meaning to Translation………..
3.2. Translation Shifts…………………………………………..
3.2.1. Catford's Translation Shifts…………………………….…
3.3. Complexity of Legal Syntax……………………….................
3.3.1. Lengthy Sentences………………………………………
3.3.1.1. Modification………………..…………….…………
3.3.1.2. Syntactic Discontinuity……………………………...
3.4. Passivisation………………………………………………..
3.5. Nominalisation …………..…………………………………..
3.6. Verbal Groups……………………………………………..…..
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