Translation of Cohesive Devices in Selected Legal Text Types from English into Arabic

Abstract

Translation is a significant medium for transferring knowledge, culture, religion and innovations. It also becomes an inevitable channel to bridge the gap between a range of languages and cultures. With a wide spectrum of characteristics, translation depends on the text-type in order to determine the nature, behavior, characteristics and functionality of linguistic aspects. In legal translation, the language itself and its constituents, such as cohesive devices, are considered sensitive and therefore make the translation a sensitive and difficult task that requires academic investigation to determine linguistic occurrences. This study handled the cohesive devices at the inter-sentential level. Thus, the present research adopts a mixed-method as research design, and it uses the well-established theories of Halliday and Hasan (1976) on cohesion. The text-type examined are operative legal texts, namely, Agreement between the Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Government of the People's Republic of China on the Reciprocal Promotion and Protection of Investments and a legal book called Handbook on Nuclear Law. The research reveals that most of the cohesive devices identified in the theory of Halliday and Hasan (1976) do occur in the operative legal texts and legal books. It is found that cohesive devices and their frequency are determined by some language peculiarities and some language norm choices in translating legal texts from the English language into the Arabic language. The study recommends that other investigations should be done on the internal cohesion and external cohesion in legal texts and other text-type. It is also advised for future research to examine substitution and ellipsis in different technical texts to see if they have similar or different findings.