Synonyms as a Challenge in Legal Translation Training

Even though it is sometimes argued that synonymy is undesirable in legal language, legal language is not devoid of it. In fact, legal language involves cases of syntactical synonymy and lexical synonymy as well as cases of absolute and partial synonymy. Therefore synonymy must be addressed in a legal translation classroom to make trainees aware of all the issues that it may involve, as well as of the fact that terms that may be perceived as synonymous by laypeople are not actually synonymous to lawyers (e.g. murder, homicide, manslaughter). What also needs to be addressed in a legal translation classroom are situations of near-synonyms, whose usage is governed by collocational or contextual restrictions (e.g. breach, violate, infringe) and sometimes involves slight nuances in meaning (e.g. liability v. responsibility, or unlawful, illegal, illicit, etc.). This article introduces a step-by-step approach designed to introduce legal translation trainees to a variety of issues related to (non-)synonymy in legal language, and presents a series of exercises that have been prepared to this end in line with the scaffolding approach. Although the exercises are designed for the English–Czech language pair, they are easily transferable to any teaching context involving English.klabal@upol.czOndřej Klabal – PhD, Assistant Professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Department of English and American Studies of Palacký University Olomouc, Czech RepublicPalacký University Olomouc, Czech RepublicAlcaraz Varó E., Hughes B., Legal Translation Explained, Manchester 2002.Arturo P., Doublets & Triplets: Translate or Drop?, https://www.translatinglawyersacademy.com/blog/doublets-and-triplets.Bázlik M., Art for Art’s Sake? Or Peculiarities of Coordination in Legal English, ‘Linguistica Pragensia’ 2007, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 90–101.Bestué Salinas C., La variación terminológica de los conceptos del derecho de sociedades y sus estrategias de traducción, ‘Revista de Llengua i Dret’ 2006, no. 65, pp. 18–35.Biel Ł., Phraseological Profiles of Legislative Genres: Complex Prepositions as a Special Case of Legal Phrasemes in EU Law and National Law, ‘Fachsprache’ 2015, no. 37, pp. 139–160.Cao D., Translating Law, Clevedon 2007.Chromá M., Synonymy and Polysemy in Legal Terminology and Their Applications to Bilingual and Bijural Translation, ‘Research in Language’ 2011, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 31–50.Cruse A., Lexical Semantics, Cambridge 1986.Cruse A., Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics, Edinburgh 2006.Cruse A., Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, Oxford 2011.Gadbin-George A., The Woolf reform of civil procedure: a possible end to legalese? ‘LSP Journal’ 2010, vol. 1 no. 2, pp. 41–49.Garner B.A., Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, Oxford 2011.Garner B.A., Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text with Exercises, Chicago 2013.Goźdź-Roszkowski S., Exploring Near-Synonymous Terms in Legal Language: A Corpus-Based Phraseological Perspective, ‘Linguistica Antverpiensia’ 2013, no. 12, pp. 94–109.Gustafsson M., The Syntactic Features of Binomial Expressions in Legal English, ‘Text’ 1984, vol. 4, no. 1–3, pp. 123–141.Klabal O., Shall We Teach Shall: An Attempt at a Systematic Step-By-Step Approach, ‘Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric’ 2018, vol. 53, no. 66, pp. 119–139.Klabal O. Teaching Comparative Conceptual Analysis to Legal Translation Trainees, (in:) M. Kubánek, O. Klabal, O. Molnár (eds.), Teaching Translation vs. Training Translators. Olomouc Modern Language Series, Olomouc 2022, pp. 47–68.Löbner S., Understanding Semantics, London 2002.Matasek M., Synonimy, antonimy i kolokacje w języku angielskim: przykłady zastosowania oraz praktyczne ćwiczenia, Poznań 2002.Matilla H., Comparative Legal Linguistics, London 2006.Matulewska A., Semantic Relations between Legal Terms. A Case Study of the Intralingual Relation of Synonymy, ‘Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric’ 2016, vol. 45, no. 58, pp. 161–174.Murphy M.L., Semantic Relations and the Lexicon, Cambridge 2008.Seleskovitch D., L’interprétation de conference, ‘Babel’ 1962, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 13–18.Tarabová K., Dublety a triplety v anglických právních textech: překlad do češtiny, Diploma Thesis, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc 2020.Tiersma P., Legal Language, Chicago 1999.Torikai S., Synonyms in Legal Discourse: A Corpus-Based Approach to a New Legal English Dictionary, ‘Language, Culture, and Communication’ 2015, no. 7, pp. 37–63Wiggers W., Drafting Contracts: Techniques, Best Practice Rules and Recommendations Related to Contract Drafting, The Hague 2011.274698