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ABSTRACT
The everyday life of citizens involves dealing with legal documents. In Iran, the special features of Persian legal language make this particularly challenging and time-consuming. The study presented in this article investigates the effectiveness of intralingual translation in simplifying Persian legal language, to (a) reduce the time required to read, (b) increase understanding and (c) increase confidence in signing legal documents. Three prevalent Persian legal texts were selected and an intralingual translation of the texts was carried out. Then, a questionnaire was designed, piloted and administered to a sample of 20 participants, to determine the time needed to read and understand the three texts and their intralingual translations, as well as their confidence to sign the documents. To control the variable of repeated reading, a control group of 20 participants was asked to read the original twice, without reading the simplified version. The findings support the hypothesis that intralingual translations of legal texts used by citizens in their daily life reduces the time required to read and understand them and increases the degree of confidence to sign them. This study encourages the use of intralingual translations to simplify legal texts for the benefit of regular citizens.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 According to Taheri (2018), Specific Laws are laws that, in addition to general laws, are adopted in the interests of the public and affect or develop general laws (e.g., partial revocation or allocation). The law on intensifying the punishment of bribery, embezzlement and fraud perpetrators, for example, is a particular piece of legislation that was passed owing to social concerns and has evolved into the general law of Islamic punishment.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Maryam Dehghanzadeh
Maryam Dehghanzadeh is a researcher and translator specialising in legal translation. She is a native speaker of Persian and holds a Master's degree with a focus on literary translation in Iran, and a Ph.D. in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. She is a member of the MIRAS research group. Her expertise and background provide a valuable perspective on the study of translation, particularly at the intersection of law and language.
Mariana Orozco-Jutorán
Mariana Orozco-Jutorán holds a PhD in translation and interpreting. She is a full professor of General and Specialized Translation from English to Spanish at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where she has been teaching since 1996. She is a member of the MIRAS research group and has participated and leads various funded research projects. She has published numerous monographs, articles and book chapters that are accessible on her website: https://webs.uab.cat/marianaorozco/. Her research interests focus on research methodology, translation didactics and legal translation.