Tailoring Translation Strategies in Legal Documents: An Analysis of the Urdu Translation of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

Abstract

Legal translation is a highly skilled and complex activity and is often described as “the ultimate linguistic challenge” (Harvey, 2002) because of its engagement with both literal and technical translations. Translating a legal text from one language into another takes into account the legal terminology and the phraseology because the legal translators not only deal with distinctive languages and cultures but also with two varied legal systems and there also exists the difference of sociocultural and historical contexts. While translating such texts, the legal translators make changes at syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels in order to make the target text somehow equivalent to the source text. As English and Urdu have different legal language systems and any inadequate or careless dealing with the terms and phrases would lead to large-scale complications and miscommunications. Therefore, the current research is planned to examine as to how the legal translators have treated syntactic, semantic and pragmatic translation shifts in the Urdu translation of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. To carry out this research, the researchers have planned a qualitative analysis first by applying Chesterman’s (1997) translation method to investigate the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic translation shifts and then by applying Alan Duff’s (1989) principles of translation to assess the quality with reference to Translation Quality Assessment (TQA). It has also been examined as to how the translators have treated that the translation shifts in order to bring ST equivalent to TT. The results indicate that though the translators have tried to handle the texts delicately, there are many places where the translators still have to be “sensitive to the intricacy, diversity and creativity of language as well as its limits and power” (Cao, 2007, p.5).