A review of the concept of “functional equivalent” in translation: business entity types in Spain and in the United States

ABSTRACT

Following a review of the concept of ‘functional equivalent’ from the perspective of comparative law and of translation studies, the paper discusses the need to use functional equivalents in the translation of business entity types. For this purpose, I first examine the existing correspondences between the most common business entity types in Spain and in the United States, through the analysis and comparison of several regulatory elements in each of the two business systems, namely formation requirements, legal personality, tax obligations, business capital structure, owner’s liability, distribution of management tasks and transferability of ownership interest. In its second part, the paper discusses the implications from the lack of equivalence for the translation of business entity types in different types of texts. The analysis of a series of examples evidences that alternative translation strategies, such as the use of a neutral term or of the original term, may better contribute to maintaining the discursive function of references to business entity types in particular translation settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Business entity type
• comparative law
• functional equivalence
• functional equivalent

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marta García González holds a PhD in Translation and Interpreting by the University of Vigo, Spain and an MA in Foreign Trade by the University of Vigo. She was a professional translator from 1997 to 2010, specializing in legal and business translation. Since 2001, she has been a lecturer of legal and business translation at the Faculty of Philology and Translation of the University of Vigo, where she was the Director of the MA in Multimedia Translation from 2009 to 2012. She is a member of the GETLT research group and her main research interests are legal and business translation, translation pedagogy, translation from and into minorized languages, and screen translation.

ORCID

Marta García González http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8076-5630