ENGLISH LEGAL LANGUAGE: DIFFICULTIES FACED BY TRANSLATORS

Abstract

The world we live in today is not what it used to be. The growth and expansion of the borders of international cooperation, trade, tourism and emigration, in which human interaction has the highest priority, is the reason for the increased interest of linguists in the English language in general and the peculiarities of the various genres that make it up, since most international conventions, international treaties, constitutions and rules are written specifically in English [1]. Despite the fact that English is considered one of the easiest languages to learn, it requires considerable effort to learn and master at the level of a native speaker. This article is devoted to a specialized discourse used in the professional and institutional context of jurisprudence, namely legal language, which, like English in general, reflects the mixture of languages elements of which have become its part. Legal language not only requires clear formulation, unambiguous translation and interpretation, which makes the work of a translator in the field of jurisprudence an extremely difficult and responsible job, but also an understanding of all the nuances associated with the development of the language and the political and economic trends that prevail in this or that period of social development of the country. This fact indicates the need for systematic research on the current state of the English legal language in order to clarify the obstacles in its mastery both among translators around the world and ordinary citizens. This article examines and analyzes the linguistic features of legal English, explains the gap between everyday language and the language of the law (the presence of archaisms, words of foreign origin, specific American and British terminology, contextual translation of common words, modal words shall and may, etc.), describes elements of legal writing and the difficulties that arise during its translation; offers solutions to those problems that complicate the translation of a legal text into Ukrainian. The author uses the methods of syntactic, lexical, comparative and comparative analysis of original texts and their translations.