Translating Lexical Legal Terms Between English and Arabic

Legal translation between English and Arabic is under researched. However, the growing need for it, due to immigration and asylum seeking, among other reasons, necessitates the importance of more research. The asymmetry between English and Arabic poses many difficulties for legal translators, be they linguistic-based, culture-specific or system-based. The aim of this research is to discuss ways of translating lexical items between English and Arabic. In this current discussion I will present, exemplify and analyse the common difficult areas of translating English/Arabic legal texts and suggest ways of dealing with them. These areas involve culture-specific and system-based terms, archaic terms, specialised terms and doublets and triplets. With this aim in mind, the paper answers the following research questions: 1. What are the common difficulties of translating legal texts between English and Arabic? 2. What are the common lexical difficulties between English and Arabic legal texts? 3. What are the procedures of translating lexical legal terms between English and Arabic? The paper concludes that translating the above-mentioned lexical terms requires expertise, professional training, robust knowledge of the linguistic and legal systems of languages, as well as up-to-date electronic dictionaries and well-defined parallel corpora. & Hanem El-Farahaty h.el-farahaty@leeds.ac.uk 1 Centre for Translation Studies, Department of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK 2 Department of Foreign Languages, University of Mansoura, Mansoura, Egypt 123 Int J Semiot Law (2016) 29:473–493 DOI 10.1007/s11196-016-9460-2


What are the common difficulties of translating legal texts between English and
Arabic? 2. What are the common lexical difficulties between English and Arabic legal texts? 3. What are the procedures of translating lexical legal terms between English and Arabic?
The paper concludes that translating the above-mentioned lexical terms requires expertise, professional training, robust knowledge of the linguistic and legal systems of languages, as well as up-to-date electronic dictionaries and well-defined parallel corpora.
Legal translation from English into Arabic or vice versa is even more difficult because of the wide gap between English and Arabic language systems, on the one hand, and legal systems, on the other. Both languages belong to different language families, Arabic being a Semitic language while English belongs to the Indo-European languages. Thus, translators from and into Arabic face difficulties on different linguistic levels, be they terminological (i.e. Sharīʿa Law vs Common Law terms), syntactic (i.e. modals and passive structures' incongruities), or textual (i.e. lexical repetition and punctuation marks).
The two legal systems are strikingly different and each of them is embedded in the cultural background of each system. Legal English is linked to Common Law where many 'terms of art' can only be understood against a Common Law background [39, p. 149] and they do not have a direct equivalent in either Islamic or Arab Civil Law. Legal Arabic, on the other hand, involves aspects of the Islamic Law and Civil Law. The former is followed in countries such as Saudi Arabia where the Qur'an and Prophetic tradition (Sunnah) form the basis of the constitution and therefore inform rulings in many aspects of life. Other countries, such as Egypt, follow both Islamic and Civil Law. Meaning and function of legal terms in each legal system are embedded in its legal culture. That is, the Common Law has its own way of legal classification; so that terms like 'lien' and 'pledge' are assigned separate legal meanings. The difference between these two terms is given below: • In a lien, the lender can only detain the property/assets/goods until payments are made, and do not have the right to sell any such assets unless explicitly stated in the lien contract.
• In a pledge, the assets will have to be delivered by the pledger (borrower) to the pledgee (lender). The pledgee will have the legal title to the asset and has the right to sell the asset in the event that the borrower is unable to meet his obligations.
This difference in legal systems makes the task of the legal translator challenging because legal vocabulary is culture specific and system-bound. The legal translator's job then is not merely transcoding the legal meaning but transferring the legal effect.
This paper aims to present to legal translators from English into Arabic and vice versa the most common lexical difficulties that could arise due to the difference in the linguistic system or the culture-specific legal system. The paper attempts to offer guidance wherever possible on how to deal with them. With this aim in mind, the paper attempts to narrow the gap between research in Arabic legal translation and other languages. The data used for this paper includes extracts from authentic legal text types from Arabic and English and excerpts from the Leeds Arabic legal corpus available online.
own 'legalese' [4, p. 14] and mixing between styles and registers makes the task of the translator unusually challenging. Examples of these involve the language of lay witnesses, slang of the police and technical jargon of the reports and testimony of expert witnesses who may be doctors, surgeons, bankers, technicians, etc. Some of the lexical difficulties whether language-specific or culture and system-specific that a translator of legal texts faces are discussed below:

Archaic and Latin Terms
In legal English, lawyers tend to use archaic terms such as 'hereby', 'thereby', 'aforesaid' and 'hereof'. These Old and Middle English words comprise a large part of the legal lexis [32, p. 13, 38, p. 87]. They continue to be used in the English legal documents, in spite of the claims that they are replaced by simpler English terms. One of the finest statements about this issue is given below: Another misconception will be, since this text is 'legal' in nature, the translator with perfect justification puts on parade all those fancy 'legal expressions' he may have picked up here and there: 'herein-above'… before yielding to this temptation, he should first consult a recognized authority such as Driedger 'the Composition of Legislation'… He would be disappointed to learn that many of what once were regarded as sacred cows of legalese have long since fallen out of popular use, to be replaced by simpler words comprehensible to the man on the street. And why not? [33, p. 64]: English 'is not one language, but two languages that happily live together under the same label, one is a Latin-root language and the other, a Germanic-root language' [3:185]. Legal English is also loaded with Latin terms that date back to the Middle Ages, such as 'ad hoc', 'de facto', 'pro rata', 'inter alia', 'ab initio' and 'mutatis mutandis' [27, p. 305].
Both archaic and Latin terms are elements of linguistic difference and they do not have a one-to-one correspondence in Arabic legal discourse. These require more effort on the part of the translator. Being a cultural mediator, the Arabic legal translator may try to understand Latin terms conceptually rather than translating them literally. The translator can also resort to glossaries to translate them into English, then explain, or expand them into Arabic [4,43]. Below I will give a few examples to clarify this point: So, 'de facto' in a 'de facto company' means: existing or holding a specified position in fact but not necessarily by legal right' (Oxford Dictionaries online) and a 'de facto company' is rendered into Arabic in example one through explanation or explicitation.
Translating archaic terms can also be done 'by having resort to parallel routines in the target language' [25, p. 394]. For example, 'notwithstanding' in English means 'despite' or 'although' [33, p.  These examples suggest that English archaic terms can be rendered into many nonarchaic or template terms in Arabic. Omission can also be used in translating archaic terms as they do not affect the meaning of the whole text. The term 'hereby' can be omitted in the Arabic translation of (I hereby declare … ‫ﺃ‬ ً ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ﻠ‬ ‫ﻦ‬ -I declare). In translating such a varied lexical list of template phrases from Arabic into English, the task of the translator becomes relatively easier due to the existence of the corresponding archaic terms, so the translator tends to follow the norms in the target language, i.e. to use an archaic term in place of any Arabic template term or phrase. To clarify this idea, below are some examples from the Leeds Arabic legal corpus:

Terms of Art, General and Abstract Terms
Legal English includes technical, that is legal terms, as well as non-technical, that is non-legal everyday vocabulary. The former category includes specialized legal terms which have fixed legal meanings and cannot be replaced by other words. Examples of these in the English tradition are 'common law' and 'equity' definitions of which are given below:  [8, p. 242] suggests that the translator provides the transliteration of the SL term as well as the definition and an explanation of the term in question so as to familiarise the reader with the legal meaning of the term and the legal concept implied by the term concerned.
David [12, p. 65] also agrees with keeping the English term as there is no equivalent in Arabic legal systems that can convey the same meaning clearly. At times, 'the comparatist may resort to the methodological instruments of substitution and transposition, in order to find equivalents for untranslatable terms in his own legal terminology.' [14, p. 425] In some cases, the translator may resort to 'functional adaptation' [31, p. 59]. For example, English distinguishes between a 'solicitor' and a 'barrister'. The former's work involves direct contact with clients and he/she can represent them through litigation, while the latter is an advocate who represents clients in the Crown (higher) court. Arabic does not distinguish between the two and uses one function for both of them, ) -Civil Register).
Legal documents involve common terms with legal meaning such as 'distress, consideration, construction, redemption, tender, hold, and prefer,' [27, p. xvii] whose Arabic counterparts are subsequently given below: Because these common terms could have a specific legal meaning in a legal context, they require more effort and alertness on the part of the legal translator. An example of the above list is the term 'tender' which means in a legal context 'formally offer a plea or evidence, or money to discharge a debt.' http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/tender In general English, it means 'soft', 'gentle', 'kind' or 'sensitive to pain or damage'. The translator, then, needs to consult specialists, and analyse similar texts for reaching the best solution. Another example is the term (compensation -‫ﺗ‬ ‫ﻌ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﺾ‬ ), definitions of which in legal and non legal contexts are given below: A legal translator is advised not to take the initiative towards disambiguating abstract words, translating them literally as they are and leaving the interpretations to the court. In Wai-Yee's view, 'descriptive equivalence' or 'paraphrase' is preferred 'if a one-to-one translation could not reveal the legal meaning or distinguish the legal term from other similar terms' [44, p. 79]. The strategy of 'paraphrase' shows that the concept is derived from a different legal system, the interpretation of which should be made according to this foreign legal system. An example from Sharīʿa Law can be the term ( c iddah -the prescribed period of waiting for women to remarry, the length of which depends on whether her husband died, or she is divorced. Š arčević sees the above techniques as secure ways to compensate for terminological incongruity [35, p. 79]. Some subsidiary solutions for the lack of one-to-one correspondence between legal terms and expressions are given below: These techniques will be very helpful in translating culture-specific and systembased terms which are discussed in the following section.

Culture-Specific and System-Based Terms
Highly culture-bound texts, i.e. texts with references to a wide range of cultural patterns of the society in question, including aspects of economic, political and legal life, require a lot of background knowledge for a coherent interpretation… Concepts have meanings only by virtue of being embedded in socio-culturally determined frames which are more or less culture-specific' [36, pp. 133, 137].
Because there is no cultural equivalence, differences across legal cultures are more difficult to overcome than some of the issues discussed above. Legrand [30, p. 33] comments that 'every law remains an expression of the language, culture and tradition that called it into being … there is nothing to show that the same inscribed words will necessarily generate the same idea in a different culture.' For Snell-Hornby [37, p. 34] 'translation is an imitation of the source text in the target text against the new cultural background, the main determinant of the translation being the specific function'. Accordingly, lexical items of different cultures may have different functions and meanings. Another example is the concept of (consideration -‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﻻ‬ ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﺒ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ) in Common Law which does not exist in other laws, that is Civil Law. It is defined below: Consideration is an essential element for the formation of a contract. It may consist of a promise to perform a desired act or a promise to refrain from doing an act that one is legally entitled to do. In a bilateral contract-an agreement by which both parties exchange mutual promises-each promise is regarded as sufficient consideration for the other. In a unilateral contract, an agreement by which one party makes a promise in exchange for the other's performance, the performance is consideration for the promise, while the promise is consideration for the performance… http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/consideration Words can also be interpreted differently in the TL. For instance, reference to God can be interpreted differently in other cultures. To clarify this argument, the following example is cited on the effect of reference to God in the Spanish context: The Spanish public servant is trying to calm down a Moroccan citizen who has just been caught with a large amount of hash. The public servant tells the Moroccan not to worry, that everything will turn out all right. The Moroccan replies "I believe in god". This answer when reproduced literally by the interpreter, offends the public servant who says to the interpreter: "Please tell him he is not the only one who believes in God and that I am no less a believer than he is. But if you really believe in God, you do not traffic in drugs." [41, p. 270] The offence is caused because the interpretation of the sentence 'I believe in God' was received literally, taking no account of the underlying cultural element behind it. In the Arabic Culture, when a person is in trouble, a person may utter sentences like the one given above. That is why, 'legal translators must engage in a constant debate with the inherited meanings that are shaped through different habitus and forms of capital, in order to recover the discourse as completely as possible, bearing in mind the different value at play in any legal exchange' [41, p. 271].
Arabic official documents such as marriage or divorce certificates involve Islamic elements such as including the Hijri calender as well as the Gregorian calendar in certificates and contracts, reference to God at the beginning of the certificate such as the basmalla (  -Allah (God) Forbids). Translation of these religious references such as the term (Allah/God) follows either 'foreignisation' or 'domestication' [40]. 'Omission' of other elements can also be an option such as the basmalla because they are not relevant to the target culture.
Some Arabic countries sometimes use other religious and culture-bound terms in Arabic legal texts such as referring to the time of the meeting by one of the five prayers that Muslims perform every day: 'That is, the sun has passed its zenith, in westerly direction, and at that time, the time for Zuhr (midday prayer) begins. The onlooker will observe his own shadow like a stick or similar inclining towards the East.' (Author's Translation) The Arab reader finds the above expressions easy to understand because they are part of his/her culture. Yet, if they are translated into English, they will be meaningless to the TT, neither do they affect the validity of the document if it is to be considered legally binding. Possibilities of omitting these elements are stressed below: …formulas of salutation referring to God are intertextual references, fully meaningful in the Arabic text, but this intertextuality is lost in non-Islamic cultures … These ritual formulas do not have any relevance for the legal validity of the document; consequently, the possibility of omitting their translation remains open. [31, p. 21] Aixela [2, p. 64] justifies the omission of culture-specific items in cases where they are either unacceptable in the target culture or irrelevant to the target reader or when the item in question is ambiguous. Aixela's viewpoint regarding the possibility of omitting items on the grounds of ambiguity, however, can be disputed here because is not the translator's task to deal with such ambiguity or omit them.
Sometimes, 'omission' (refer to [13] on the justifications of omissions) is used to overcome such religious elements as in translating Arabic multi-lateral treaties into English. To clarify this argument, Edzard [16, p. 38]  the function of the quotations is twofold: they can either be used to show an assumed equality between the Islamic and the Western Perspective on international human rights, or they can be used to show an assumed superiority of Islamic perspective.
The second possibility in Edward's view above is not likely because one can argue that quoting from the Qur'an is a cultural orientation. Thus, finding an alternative in the target culture that gives the same function of the source culture is the best solution. This strategy may be the most effective in literary translation or proverbs. In this context, Emery [20, p. 134] states that 'a problem of a different order stems from culture-bound expressions or formulas which are very much a part of everyday speech in Arabic and as such occur in literary texts. Here the translator is advised to choose a rendering which emphasizes the illocutionary force of the expression'.
In translating international documents such as those of the UN, there is a tendency to avoid religious terms. Edzard [16, p. 54] maintains that 'modern diplomatic Arabic still reflects a remarkable degree of historical, cultural and religious conscience that has no parallel in other official languages in the United Nations System'. Edzard [16, p. 55] argues that 'Arabic has fully adapted-where appropriate-to French-and English lexical and stylistic patterns. A high percentage of Arabic documents hardly reveal any Islamic background and could just as well be translations from English or French'. Edzard's conclusions, however, are based on the diplomatic texts -as he calls them-of the Arabic representatives in the UN not including any other Arabic documents.
There are numerous other examples of terms which are specific to Islamic Jurisprudence with no equivalence in English such as ( ‫ﻣ‬ ُ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻌ‬ ‫ﻪ‬ -mut c ah) and ( ‫ﻋ‬ ِ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﹼ‬ ‫ﻩ‬ -c iddah) ( ‫ﺧ‬ ُ ‫ﻠ‬ ‫ﻊ‬ /khul c -divorce). These terms can be translated by borrowing, i.e. transliterating them, as well as explaining, possibly in a form of a footnote. ( ‫ﻣ‬ ُ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻌ‬ ‫ﻪ‬ -mut c ah) literally means joy or delight, but in Islamic Jurisprudence it means 'temporary marriage (fixing dower and period)' [22, p. 297], ( ‫ﻋ‬ ِ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﹼ‬ ‫ﻩ‬ / c iddah) refers to the prescribed period of waiting for women before remarrying. These above terms are culturally loaded and need to be made more explicit. In this context, Hickey [29, p. 226] notes that 'the more weakly, invisibly or notionally the marking, the more the exegesis may be required to make the text suitable to be read by a TT reader.' Al-Khudrawi [1, p. 277] has defined and distinguished between two types of ( ‫ﻋ‬ ِ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﹼ‬ ‫ﻩ‬ -c iddah): The term of probation incumbent upon a woman in consequence of dissolution of marriage either by divorce or the death of her husband. After a divorce the period is three months, and after the death of her husband, four months and ten Translating Lexical Legal Terms Between English and Arabic 485 days, both periods being enjoined by the Qur'an.'(For details of the exact time of c iddah in the Qur'an refer to Sura 2, verses 232-234).
( ‫ﺧ‬ ُ ‫ﻠ‬ ‫ﻊ‬ /khul c ) is one Islamic legal term which has no direct equivalent terms in English. So, translating it as 'divorce' is not the straightforward equivalent of the Arabic terms. It can be translated in more than one way (i) coining an English equivalent 'women-sought divorce'; (ii) explicitation as 'divorce (of wife) for consideration payable by her' [22, p. 155]; (iii) explanation as given by Al-Khudrawi [1, p. 5:124]: 'an agreement concluded for the purpose of dissolving marriage. The release from the marriage tie obtained by a wife upon payment of a compensation or consideration whenever enmity takes place between husband and wife, and they both see reason to'. All these three methods could be equally combined with borrowing of the term to the TT, for 'clarifying these terms for readers with a different legal background to be able to grasp the meaning as accurately as possible from their viewpoint of the legal world [34, p. 362].
Concepts have meaning only by virtue of being embedded in socio-culturally determined frames which are more or less culture-specific and a message may be totally distorted if the implicit culture-specific information or culture-specific word meaning or an allusion is not grasped by the translator [36, p. 137]. Similarly, Legrand [30, p. 35] maintains that 'there is nothing to show that the same idea will necessarily generate the same idea in a different culture, a fortiori if the inscribed words are themselves different because they have been rendered in another language.' Accordingly, translation of the above mentioned Islamic terms demands paraphrase to correspond directly and accurately to the SL word and render its connotations to the TL reader. This argument also applies to other terms such as: Below is the translation of the above terms as given in Al-Khudrawi [1, p. 88, 37, 420]: Hadd: 'Prescribed punishment. In its primitive sense hadd signifies 'obstruction'. In law it expresses the punishments, the limits of which have been defined by Allah in the Qur'an or by Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) in the 'Hadith' Traditions. al-mubara'ah: 'mutual discharge'. A term used in the law of divorce when a man says to his wife, 'I am discharged from the marriage between you and me' and she consents there to. It is the same as Khul c nashizah: 'disobedient wife'. For a woman to be nashiz is to be described as 'wifely disobedient' who violates 'marital duties' on her part.  [6] and [7]). Descriptive paraphrase 'relays the intended legal meaning of the Islamic legal term and reproduces the intended legal effect thereof in the TT, which is the end result required in legal translation' [7, p. 903].
The variety of examples given in the above section show a number of procedures (refer to [43]) which a translator can use one or a combination of procedures to render these culture-specific terms that are alien to the target language, be them borrowing, literal translation, paraphrase or omission.

Culture-Specific and System-Based Doublets and Triplets
Doublets and triplets or binomials are 'a juxtaposition of two or may be three words' [38, p. 13] which 'are syntactically co-ordinated and semantically related' [26, p. 123] such as 'true, and correct'; 'false and untrue' or conjoined phrases: 'by and with the consent and advice of …'. Arabic legal texts involve two or three words of related meanings, sometimes synonymous or near-synonymous which are conjoined by (‫/ﻭ‬wa -and) or ( ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ /aw -or). These are 'binomials or polynomials'; [9, p. 138] 'hendiadys' [5, p. 244 literally: the missing absent person) are rendered into one adjective 'the missing' with the addition of the noun 'person' as a substitution of the implicitly third person pronoun existing in the two words. This procedure of omission in translating doublets and triplets justifies translating doublets and triplets through 'simplification' [31, p. 97]. This argument is also supported below: translating both words will flout the pragmatic maxim of quantity by making the target text unnecessarily verbose while dropping both will result in shorter but more implicit sentences. However, before embarking on either option, a translator has to determine which hendiadys achieves emphasis through repetition and which are simply superfluous. [5, p. 244] Yet, the above argument is not always applicable as translators, clients, recipients and lawyers prefer to translate into the same number of words [31, p. 97]. This is motivated by the quest for accuracy through adherence to the ST.
In the following lines, I will consider the translation of English-Arabic doublets and triplets. By analysing these terms from both directions, I will be able to compare the procedures of translating them to their translation from Arabic to English. Below is example 16 from a 'lease agreement': In the above example, the two synonyms (made and entered into-literally: ( are rendered into one passive verb ( -issued). A literal translation of this sentence 'this lease agreement was made and entered into' could be: …   ‫ﺗ‬  ‫ﻢ‬  ‫ﺗ‬  ‫ﺤ‬  ‫ﺮ‬  ‫ﻳ‬  ‫ﺮ‬  ‫ﻭ‬  ‫ﺑ‬  ‫ﺪ‬  ‫ﺃ‬  ‫ﻋ‬  ‫ﻘ‬  ‫ﺪ‬  ‫ﺍ‬  ‫ﻹ‬  ‫ﻳ‬  ‫ﺠ‬  ‫ﺎ‬  ‫ﺭ‬  ‫ﻫ‬  ‫ﺬ‬  ‫ﺍ‬ This tenancy agreement was issued and entered into …. (literal translation) However, this translation is redundant and is not common in Arabic official documents. In Arabic, the contract becomes binding on the day it has been written or made. It is of value to the argument to refer to the definition of ( ‫ﺣ‬ َ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﱠ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ -to write) [23, p. 136]: ‫ﺣ‬ َ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﱠ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ : write, make (contract, etc.) This verb is typical of legal Arabic discourse; it appears frequently in certificates, passports and it mostly occurs in the passive or the perfect. -terms and conditions). It is safer to use different terms for this doublet because the legal implications of 'terms' may be different from that of 'conditions'. For example, terms for an employment contract include what have been agreed by the employer and the employee. Conditions, on the other hand in the same context mean the stipulations or requirements that are demanded by the employer from the employee.
Another example of doublets and triplets from the same document is given in 18 below: Example 18 The standing instructions shall become null and void if the Account does not have sufficient balance to cover the transaction (Account Opening Form, article 2.5) Translation of doublets and triplets vary. They could be rendered into one element in the TT where the translator views these as rewording of the same linguistic meaning and/or the cultural concept, hence decides to be economic in translating them. One can also argue that the 'literal translation' technique, where there is a repetition in translating some doublets, is sometimes unjustified where one TT equivalent can render the intended meaning given in the original. In most of the examples presented, doublets, and triplets are rendered in the same number of words in the TT even though they result in redundancy. Thus, 'literal translation', and sometimes 'transposition' are the most common techniques of translating doublets and triplets.