Ain Shams University Women's College for Arts, Science and Education Department of English Language and Literature

A Legal-Linguistic Analysis of Arabic Legal

Texts and their Translation into English: A Contrastive Stylistic Approach

A Thesis

Submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature

Women's College for Arts, Science and Education-

Ain Shams University

In Fulfillment of the Requirements for the M.A. Degree in

Linguistics

By Al-Shaymaa Salah Al-Sayed Mohammad Al-Kholy

Under the Supervision of:

Dr. Ahmed Shafik El-Khatib

Professor Emeritus of Linguistics Faculty of Languages and Translation

Al-Azhar University

And

Dr. Gihan Shafie El-Margoushy Associate Professor of English Literature Women's College, Ain Shams University

2013

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, al-ḥamdu lillāh, all Praise and thanks be to Allāh,

whose blessings upon us are countless.

Then, I am greatly indebted to my main supervisor, Professor 'Aḥmad

Šafīq Al-Ḫaṭīb, for making my work possible in the first place and for his

help and continued support. His valuable suggestions and constructive

criticism led to improving earlier versions of this thesis. Without his

patience, insightful comments and meticulous revision in various stages of

completion of this thesis, this work would have never been existed. So, I owe

special debt of gratitude to him for spending some of his precious time

revising this humble work. Really, I am very lucky to be one of his students.

I would also like to express my appreciation and gratitude to Professor

Ḥasan Waǧieh, for offering me the opportunity to carry out this research

under the name of Professor Al-Ḫaṭīb. Great thanks to every one in the

department of English Language and Translation, Al-Azhar University, a

department that includes highly valued, respectable and decent persons.

I am also deeply indebted to my co-supervisor, Associate Professor Ǧīhān

Al-Marǧūšī, for her support, kindness and helpfulness.

I would also like to pass a note of thanks to all those who helped in

providing me with many sources that have made this work much easier,

wishing them all the best in their careers.

Finally, yet importantly, no words can appropriately express my deepest

gratitude to my lovely family, husband, and my kids for their support,

encouragement and patience throughout the duration of this thesis.

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ABSTRACT

This study ventures into a thorough contrastive stylistic analysis of two

Arabic legal documents and their translation into English. It investigates the

stylistic features of the language of law, and how they are rendered from a

source into a target language without violating the overall meaning. Such

texts are analysed and compared in terms of their lexical, syntactic and

textual features. In order to achieve a satisfactory result in the field of

translating legal texts, the translators must have a good command of the

complexities of the legal style of the two different legal languages involved

in translation. Both stylistics and translation studies have the same aim, that

is, how to fulfill social communication with effective linguistic methods. In

the process of translation, it is necessary for the translator to deal with his

translation carefully in order to make the translation accord with the source

text in the aspect of style. Therefore, the linguistic stylistic analysis

concerning lexical, grammatical and textual features of the legal language

provides an opportunity for the legal translator to gain more insight into the

contrastive features between Arabic and English legal languages as well as

their respective stylistic features. It is also accepted that all varieties of

language use, whether literary or non-literary, have linguistic forms that are

subjected to empirical investigation (Fowler, 1966:16 as cited in Al-Zoubi

and Al-Hassnawi, 2001:14). Therefore, in stylistic analysis, items and

structures are isolated and described using descriptive frameworks drawn

from whatever school of descriptive linguistics the stylistician subscribes to

or finds most useful for a given purpose.

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List of Abbreviations

Full Form

Abbreviation

Source Language SL

Target Language TL

Source Language Text SLT

Target Language Text TLT

Source Text ST

Target Text TT

Descriptive Translation Studies DTS

Target-Oriented Approach TOA

Source-Oriented Theories SOT

Classical Arabic CA

Modern Standard Arabic MSA

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List of Transliteration Symbols

To facilitate the pronunciation of Arabic words appearing in the Arabic

texts, the following DIN 31635 Arabic transliteration system1 has been

consistently employed:

Letter (A) Transliteration Letter (E)

/hamzah/ /᾽/ أ /᾽b/ /bā/ ب /᾽t/ /tā/ ت /᾽ṯ/ /ṯā/ ث /ǧ/ /ǧīm/ ج /᾽ḥ/ /ḥā/ ح /᾽ḫ/ /ḫā/ خ /d/ /dāl/ د /ḏ/ /ḏāl/ ذ /᾽r/ /rā/ ر /z/ /zāy/ ز /s/ /sīn/ س /š/ /šīn/ ش /ṣ/ /ṣād/ ص /ḍ/ /ḍād/ ض /᾽ṭ/ /ṭā/ ط /᾽ẓ/ /ẓā/ ظ /ain῾/ /،/ ع /ġ/ /ġain/ غ /᾽f/ /fā/ ف /q/ /qāf/ ق /k/ /kāf/ ك /l/ /lām/ ل /m/ /mīm/ م

1Mohammed Abdel-Aal Attia, “Implications of the Agreement Features in Machine Translation”, an MA. Thesis, Al-Azhar University, 2002, p. vii. It is also available on: <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Arabic >

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/n/ /nūn/ ن /᾽h/ /hā/ ه /w/ /wāw/ و /᾽y/ /yā/ ى

Short Vowels

/a/ /fatḥah/

/i/ /kasrah/

/u/ /ḍammah/

Long Vowels /ā/ /ī/ /ū/

Compound Vowels

/ai/ /aw/

The Arabic geminated consonants (i.e. Arabic letters with /šaddah/) are doubled.

/tā' marbūṭah/ as word-final /-h/ normally, or /-t/ in a word in the

construct state.

A hyphen /-/ is used to separate morphological elements, notably the article and prepositions.

This system may not conform to some Arabic names occurring in this

study, which have their own previously established transliterations.

This system is used by the researcher because it is simple in the sense that every Arabic letter is transliterated into only one symbol. The problem with that system is that some of the transliteration characters which carry diacritics either above or below, cannot be keyed directly on an ordinary keyboard.

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Table of Contents

Page

Acknowledgments…………………..........................................

Abstract………………………..……………………………….. List of Abbreviations……………………………………………….. Transliteration of Arabic Sounds ………………………………….. Introduction....................................................................................... Statement of the Problem………………………………………… Research Hypothesis………………………………….………… Research Aim…………………………….…………………… Research Questions……………………………………………. The Corpus………………………………………….………...… Presentation of Arabic Examples in the Study…………………….… The Methodology of the Study………….……………………... Significance of the Study……………………….………………. The Scope of the Study……………………………………….. Organisation of the Study………………………………………….….

Chapter One: Review of Literature………………….………...........

1.1. The History of Legal Translation …………………….............

1.1.1. The Language of the Law ……………………………..…...

1.1.2. Approaches to Legal Translation…………………….……

1.2. The Notion of Equivalence…………………………….........

1.3. Descriptive Translation Studies…………………..……….

1.3.1. Toury's Theory of Target-Oriented Approach (TOA)…….

1.3.2. Translation Norms………………………………….…..…

1.4. Contrastive Linguistics and the Theory of Translation………...…

1.5. Stylistics and Translation Theory…………………………..

1.6. Legal Register…………………...........................................

1.7. Stylistic Features of Legal Language …………..................

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Chapter Two: Lexical Features of Legal Language………..

2.1. The Gulf between Legal Language and Ordinary Language………..……

2.1.1. Dual Nature of Legislative Language ……………………...

2.2. The Lexical Features of Legalese………………….…..…….….

2.2.1. Legal Archaisms…………………….............................

2.2.1.1. Old and Medieval English Terms………………..

2.2.1.2. Latin and French Terms……………………………

2.2.2. Common Words with Uncommon Meaning………….…..

2.2.3. Frequent Use of Doublets and Triplets…………………..

2.2.4. Technical Terms……………………………………….…….

2.2.5. Deliberate Use of Vague Terms…………….………….

Chapter Three: Syntactic Features of Legal Language………

3.1. The Importance of Syntactic Meaning to Translation………..

3.2. Translation Shifts…………………………………………..

3.2.1. Catford's Translation Shifts…………………………….…

3.3. Complexity of Legal Syntax……………………….................

3.3.1. Lengthy Sentences………………………………………

3.3.1.1. Modification………………..…………….…………

3.3.1.2. Syntactic Discontinuity……………………………...

3.4. Passivisation………………………………………………..

3.5. Nominalisation …………..…………………………………..

3.6. Verbal Groups……………………………………………..…..

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