Lesson 16 Translation of formal texts Theoretical part

Lesson 16
Translation of formal texts
Theoretical part
Translation of Official Documents.
In a way translation of official documents is the opposite of literary translation in what concerns the freedom of translator's actions and choices.
As you will remember, literary translation is more art than craft which is accounted for by the nature of literary texts. Translation of a literary text is unique and unprecedented; it cannot be standardised and obeys almost no rules.
Unlike literary texts the texts of official documents are highly standardised: this applies both to the structure of the whole text (macrostructure) and to the arrangement of individual paragraphs and sentences (microstructure).
At the macro level an official document usually consists of a preamble, main text body and a finalising (concluding) part. Depending on the type of document the composition and content of its individual parts may slighly vary (see Appendix to this Manual). In modern linguistics standard text structures intended for information presentation at different language levels are called frames.
A frame is understood as a set language structure with changeable elements.
The changeable elements within a text frame are called slots. Let us take a preamble to a commercial agreement as an example of a frame.
In the above text frame the italicized text fragments are presumed to be changeable depending on the subject and conditions of the Agreement, e.g., (prior and written consent» may be replaced by «oral consents, etc.
Bearing in mind the standardised and clicheed structure of official documents one may formulate the main translator's task as follows:
The task of a translator translating official documents is to find target language equivalents of the source text frames and use them in translation as standard substitutes, filling the slots with frame fillers in compliance with the document content.
Another important task of a translator translating official documents is to keep to proper matching patterns of lexical and grammatical structures within the frames. To give an example, English forms of Participle I in the preamble of some international agreements may be rendered in Ukrainian as «3 Memoю...»
Besides, translators of official documents must pay special attention to translation of standard terms and terminological word combination in the texts.
More information on grammatical and other aspects of official document translation are given in the lecture that follows.