The Bergen Translation Corpus and its benefit for training purposes: a case study on legal texts

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to account for a case study based on the Bergen Translation Corpus (BTC), a project launched to identify specific translation challenges in connection with the National Translator Accreditation Exam (NTAE) in Norway. The corpus is made up of translations by candidates entering the NTAE. The exam is held with no requirement to have previously attended a study programme in translation studies. The BTC is a parallel multilingual corpus, primarily compiled for research purposes, but subsequently used for training purposes of candidates in the context of the NTAE. This paper introduces a research-based and training-oriented application, with the aim to identify candidates’ handling of two specific translation challenges in legal texts, viz. culturally bound concepts (cultural references) and modality. The small number of translations included in the BTC allows only for a qualitative analysis. Results of the case study support findings from previous studies on those issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Legal texts
• legal translation training
• legal translation research
• corpus-based translation studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The research reported here was first presented at a workshop on LSP corpora in specialised translation during the 21^st Conference on Language for Specific Purposes 2017, by the authors of this paper together with Claudia Förster Hegrenæs and Marita Kristiansen.

2. In Norway there is currently only one translation programme at bachelor level (Norwegian – English) and since autumn 2021 a master programme in Translation and Professional Communication, both at the University of Agder.

3. Additional details are given in Section 4.

4. See Simonnæs et al. (2015)

5. However, the final language code in the metadata uses:

ATN (= American translation from Norwegian),

BTN (= British translation from Norwegian),

ETN (= English translation from Norwegian),

FTN (= French translation from Norwegian),

STN (= Spanish translation from Norwegian) and

TTN (= Tysk [German] translation from Norwegian).

6. Unfortunately, there is currently a lack of updating with the latest available input of the translations from 2016. However, the data for 2016 has recently been included in the corpus, though after our analysis. The lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic has further delayed the updating

7. The candidates are required to indicate whether they use American English or British English; the same applies to French, German and Spanish with respect to different variations of those languages, for instance spelling. This information is taken into account in the assessment process.

8. For the coding and alignment, we are indebted to Knut Hofland, Uni Research at the University of Bergen.

9. After 2015, collecting information about the candidate’s mother tongue has no longer been permitted due to constraints in the Norwegian Personal Data Protection Act (Personopplysningsloven 2000). Unfortunately, available and previously permitted use of data on the candidate’s translation experience (less than 5 years, between 5–10 years, more than 10 years) is neither permitted.

10. The translation of the LGP-text together with a reflection protocol is performed in a home exam in contrast to the translation of three LSP texts to be made without any reflection protocol in a school exam. For more details about the NTAE see Simonnæs (2012); Hegrenæs and Simonnæs (2020).

11. See below for details on the assessment criteria Hegrenæs and Simonnæs (2020), and the homepage of the NTAE: (in Norwegian only): https://www.nhh.no/contentassets/ab1e7b48c2ea43269940827f8d282be9/instruks-for-vurdering-v-hjemme–og-skoleeksamen_versjon-30.06.2020_final.pdf

12. Raising problem awareness in translator training is crucial and should help to avoid translation errors. On this topic, see for instance Angelone (2018, 23 f).

13. See fn. 8 for explanation.

14. Cited in Vigier and DelMarchSánchez (2017)

15. For in-depth detail on this topic see Rheinstein (1968); Merryman (1984); Örücü (2004), andLundmark (2012), among others. Of particular interest on the interplay of comparative law and legal translation is Moreno-Rivero 2017) reviewing Soriano-Barabino’s book of 2016.

16. Indeed, labour relations, regulations and laws, as well as socio-culturally based traditions and practice vary between the countries concerned in this study, although the notion of ‘contract’ or ‘agreement’ can be pointed at as common ground.

17. Capitals are used for the designation of the concept while the linguistic expression is rendered in italics.

18. In Germany, being a federal state, there are such bodies in each Bundesland, although their denominations may vary.

19. Cf. also Krogsgaard Vesterager (2019) who discusses a similar example. Although her participants are ten professional Danish translators divided into two groups of experts vs. non-experts in Danish-Spanish legal translation, her findings point to the use of either adding a generic adjective designating the source legal culture or to the use of a lexical borrowing as is the case in the Norwegian-Spanish example in Table 4.

20. The term ‘preventive detention’ is used in the unofficial English version of the Norwegian Penal Code at https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/2005-05-20-28, which states in Section 40 ‘If a sentence of imprisonment is deemed insufficient to protect the life, health or freedom of other persons, preventive detention in an institution under the correctional services may be imposed when the offender is found guilty of […]’.

21. For a broader discussion of modality, see for instance Aijmer (2015).

22. Permission, a notion that certainly implies possibility and thus holds a position on the epistemic scale, has nevertheless, relating to law, deontic force, expressed for instance by the modal auxiliary ‘kan’ (‘can’). In such a context, the legislator imposes a faculty, a possibility, makes something possible by the force of law.

23. See also Gotti and Dossena (2001, 12) who rightly argue that it is difficult to establish a clear-cut distinction between deontic modality, on the one hand, and epistemic and dynamic modalities on the other hand.

24. Williams (2009) has examined the choice of finite verbal constructions in English legislative texts where ‘shall’ has been deliberately removed compared to another corpus (‘Word data’ corpus) where this is not done. His analysis shows that the simple present accounts for 52%, whereas the use of ‘must’ accounts for 13.7%.

25. See also Engberg (2001) and (Engberg 2002) on the use of ‘sollen’ in modern German legislative texts where ‘sollen’ is usually interpreted to express a certain margin for discretion.

26. See also the discussion in Orts (2015) on the increasing use of ‘must/must not’ in present-day provisions instead of ‘shall/shall not’, pointing out that this use makes legislative language ‘more accessible and less ambiguous to the law-taker’.

27. The authors are grateful for the anonymous reviewer’s comments on the example under discussion.