Translation of official documents: grammatical aspect

Translation of official documents: grammatical aspect

Е.Н. Астафьева, Л.Н. Буланова

Such typical structural factors as stereotyping and the tradition, fixing stereotyping in one form or another, are characteristic of official environment of texts functioning. First of all the external form of official texts, which must be followed by all users of this form of communication, should belong to the basic stereotypes of pragmatic function’s forming.

In some respects the translation of official documents is the opposite of literary translation, which provides for the freedom of actions and the choice of an interpreter. Literary translation itself is unique, it can not be standardized, this translation is not the subject to almost any rules [1, с. 25].

In contrast to the literary texts, the texts of official documents are very standardized: this concerns both the structure of the whole text (macrostructure), and separate paragraphs and sentences (microstructures). At the macro level, the official documents have a rigid structure: preamble, the main text, and conclusion. The basic principles, on which all of the following combination is built and from which it follows, are postulated in the preamble. The preamble reflects the basic values of the authors of the document, which should be seen as unshakable truth. The preamble is an introductory part. A specific description of any rules, regulations, rules, for which a document is created, is contained in the main or the operative part. Depending on the size of the document the main part may not have internal divisions, but more often «articles» and «sections» are allocated in it. As a rule, the document is completed with the conclusion, which summarizes the main result of this work.

Depending on the type of a document the structure and the content of its individual parts may slightly vary. In modern linguistics, the structures of the standard text that represent the information in different linguistic levels are called frames [2, с. 67].

Under the «frame» we mean an organized structure of a language with the changing elements. The changing elements inside the text frame are called slots. Let’s consider the term «frame» on the example of the preamble to the commercial agreement.

For example:

AGREEMENT

This agreement is made this _______ day of __________, 2010, by and between ___________, [a ________ corporation with its principal office at _____________] or [an individual with an office and mailing address at ____________] («Agent»), and [company name], a corporation organized and existing under the laws of _______________, with its principal place of business at _____________________________________________________ (__________________).
In this frame of the agreement gaps in the form represent slots that must be filled in (with the date, the company name, its address, as it’s shown in this example).

But the text frame rarely takes the form of the text with missing intervals. More often the frame is a text-standard with constant and variable components.

Thus, the main aim of an interpreter, engaged in translation of official documents is to find such equivalents of the source language, being the frames of the original text, which could be used in translation as standard replacements filling at the same time the slots with the frames in accordance with the content of the document [3, с. 86].

The official-business communication, where the norms of a human behavior are more clearly defined, is usually canonized. These norms are determined by such formal stylistic rules as formality, impersonality (impersonal character), objectivity, non-emotionality, dryness.

The official style is represented by the following sub-styles, or variants:

1) the language of official documents;

2) the language of legal documents;

3) the language of diplomacy;

4) the language of military documents.

As well as other styles of language, this style also has the certain communicative objective and, consequently, has its own system of interaction of a language and stylistic meanings. The prime objective of the communication of this style is to define the conditions, connecting both sides in coordination and to reach the agreement between these two counteractants.

Each of sub-styles of this official style has its special terms, phrases and expressions which differ from terms, phrases and the expressions which are peculiar to other versions of this style.

The typical lexical means of official style’s forming include:

– Functional-colored words. The stylistically colored nature of the lexicon is due to the essential content of the text, that is, the content, being defined with the sphere of the functioning, in this case with the official sphere;

– Terms and specialized phrases;

– Set expressions and clichés of texts;

– The use of abbreviations, conventional symbols and shortenings. They are so numerous that in order to decode them, the special supplements to the dictionaries are used;

– The use of words in their logical vocabulary meaning;

– The collective nouns;

– The certain structural parts and compositions;

– The verbal nouns;

– The forms of a verb in the third person, the indefinite-personal pronoun «man», the verbs in the passive form (for German);

– Officialese;

whereas – принимая во внимание;

it is essential – необходимо;

everyone has the right to – каждый человек имеет право;

freedom of speech and belief – свобода слова и убеждений.

Thus, the translation of official documents is different in that it is standardized, such typical structural factors as stereotyping and tradition are characteristic of it, and the official business communication is rather canonized.

Библиографический список

1. Брандес М.П., Провоторов В.И. Предпереводческий анализ текста. – М., 2003.

2. Мирам Г.Э. Алгоритмы перевода: Вступительный курс по формализации перевода. – Киев, 2004.

3. Мирам Г.Э., Дайнеко В.В., Тарануха Л.А., Грищенко М.В., Гон А.М. Основы перевода. – Киев, 2002.

4. Мюллер В.К. Новый англо-русский словарь. – М., 2002.

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