法律英语的困难和克服方法

O. Shkurat, L. Gartsunova
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摘要

摘要本文主要研究法律英语及其主要特点。法律语言是法律专业人员在其专业活动中使用的语言。历史上法律英语是与普通英语分开发展的,这一事实使外行人很难理解。人们在陪审团指示、安全披露、信用卡协议、公寓租约、手机合同、本票等文件中发现了传统的法律文书。即使以英语为母语的人也经常抱怨说,他们不能完全理解为他们提供信息而写的文件。几个世纪以来,对法律英语的理解一直是个问题。这就是20世纪70年代“简明英语运动”兴起的原因。这场运动的目的是简化法律写作,使其对普通人来说简单明了。这个问题不仅出现在那些母语是英语的人身上。非母语人士也在为复杂的英语法律写作而挣扎。从事国际法、商法或公司法领域的乌克兰法律专业人员必须用英语起草文件。有时这可能是一个真正的问题,因为不像英国和美国的法律学校,我们大多数不提供英语法律写作的单独课程。本文的目的是为乌克兰律师和口译员提供实用的建议,如何考虑到法律英语话语的特点,以清晰,简单和易懂的方式起草文件。研究结果。许多英美科学家、律师和语言学家都把他们的研究投入到简明英语运动中。通过对他们作品的分析,可以看出影响法律英语发展的四大因素:历史因素、社会学因素、政治因素和法学因素。由于这些原因,法律英语中充满了外来词、古语、暗语和艺术术语。这些因素也造成了法律写作中正式词的频繁使用、常用词的普遍使用以及故意歧义。律师对法律写作的研究基本上集中在词汇上。语言学家在他们的研究中发现了一些其他的特征:过于复杂的句子,被动,名词化,多重否定,古语和行话,不适当的文档设计。所描述的简化法律英语的方法非常容易使用。考虑到文章中提到的技巧,法律专业人员将能够起草公众清晰易懂的文件。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
Legal English Difficulties and Ways to Overcome
Abstract. This article is devoted to the study of legal English and its main characteristics. Legal language is the language used by legal professionals in their professional activity. That fact that historically legal English developed separately from the plain English made it difficult for understanding by laypeople. People find the traditional legal writing in such documents as jury instructions, security disclosures, credit card agreements, apartment leases, cell phone contract, promissory note etc. Even native English speakers often complain that they cannot fully understand the documents written to give them information. The understanding of legal English has been a problem for centuries. It was the cause why the plain English movement arose in the 1970s. The purpose of the movement was to simplify the legal writing, make it simple and clear for average people. This problem arises not only for those people whose native language is English. Nonnative speakers also struggle with the complexity of English legal writing. Ukrainian legal professionals that engaged in the area of international, business or corporate law, have to draft documents in English. Sometimes that could be a real problem because unlike English and American legal schools, the majority of ours don't provide the separate course of English legal writing. The purpose of this article is to give practical advice to Ukrainian lawyers and interpreters, how, taking into account the peculiarities of legal English discourse, to draft documents in clear, simple and understandable way. Results of research. A lot of English and American scientists, lawyers as well as linguists, devoted their studies to the plain English movement. Analysis of their works shows that four major factors had influenced on the development of legal English: historical, sociological, political and jurisprudential. Owing to them legal English is full of words of foreign origin, archaisms, argots and terms of art. These factors also caused the frequent usage of formal words, common usage of common words with uncommon meaning, deliberate ambiguity in legal writing. The studies of legal writing by lawyers have focused basically on vocabulary. Linguists in their researchers have identified some other features: overly complex sentences, passives, nominalizations, multiple negations, archaisms and jargon, inappropriate document design. Described ways of simplifying legal English are quite easy to use. Taking into account tips mentioned in the article, legal professionals will be able to draft documents that will be clear and understandable for general public.
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