Highlighting Readability Issues by the Content Analysis of a Legal Text, for Translation Purposes. Case Study

Abstract

In a globalized world, linguistic harmonization leads to complex translation issues. Globalization contributed to the intricacy of the economic, social and political background, and triggered urgent requirements regarding the harmonization of legislation, which, in turn, entailed the necessity to tackle legal terminology and terminological differences. In the first part of the paper, we have briefly presented some features of the technical language and several issues caused by its intricacy. The second part of the work analyzes a specialized text in terms of lexical density, dealing with aspects such as text statistics, frequency and top words, frequency of word structures, as our main purpose has been to contribute to an enhanced understanding of specialized texts. Both jurists and translators should approach legal concepts carefully when transposing them into the target-language, in order to avoid misunderstandings. Moreover, multicultural knowledge and flexibility are only some of the requirements of a faithful legal translation.

Keywords

• english legal language
• translation
• specialized terminology
• readability
• lexical density