Translation of modal verbs from English into Russian in the texts of international treaties
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2023-6-23-30
The active cooperation of countries in various spheres of life leads to a constant demand for the translation of normative documents, including international treaties regulating the procedure for interaction of the countries. An international agreement is a legal document and refers to the official business style, the features of which are accuracy, clarity, and lack of ambiguity. A characteristic feature of the style in English is the large number of modal verbs having several meanings that sometimes cannot be expressed by modal verbs in Russian. The translator faces the difficult task of choosing translation units suitable for adequate translation of the meaning of the modal verb. The aim of the study is to determine the ways of translating modal verbs from English into Russian in legal texts through identifying the factors by which the translator can determine the meaning of a modal verb in a specific context and correlating them with the adequate variants of translation into Russian. The research is based on an international treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Indonesia in the law enforcement sphere using such methods of linguistic analysis as descriptive, comparative, and quantitative. The most frequent modal verb in English treaties is shall; may is in second place; other modal verbs are found, but extremely rare. Modal verbs are translated into Russian by: a verb in the present tense; a verb “может”; a contracted form of an adjective “должен”; an adverb “необходимо”. When translating modal verbs into Russian, it is necessary to take into account many factors: the requirements of the functional style of speech; shades of the meanings of modal verbs and their function in the sentence; the context specifying the meaning of the modal verb; the norms of the translation language.
Keywords: modal verbs, legal translation, translation strategies, grammatical features of translation, translation of international treaties
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Issue: 6, 2023
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: COMPARATIVE AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Pages: 23 — 30
Downloads: 367