Translation strategies of legal texts: experimental approach

It will not be an exaggeration to say that a contract is a document, which represents one of the most common types of legal texts. A translator dealing with agreements has, among other things, to be skillful in finding correct translation solutions, which suggests identifying and analyzing complicated legal-linguistic phenomena. The survey held was aimed at contributing to the development of analytical skills, essential for rendering this type of legal texts. At the first stage, it involved identifying most common challenges, such as equivalence/non-equivalence of terminology, translation of acronyms/abbreviations and phraseology, use of pronouns and some others. Then the selected fragments were offered for translation to a focus group of 12 participants. The tested skills involved both translation from English into Russian and from Russian into English. The evidence gathered was analyzed from the perspective of translation strategies. To sort out the results the statistical method was applied. Another objective of the study was to determine the educational needs of those who took part in the survey. Being a highly intellectual activity, legal translation suggests awareness in legal, cultural and linguistic fields of the source and target languages. The aim of the questionnaire, offered to the respondents, was to outline the gaps in qualification and/or experience. The results, though predictable, confirmed the necessity of cross-discipline courses, covering wide range of relevant knowledge, skills and competences.(C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.