Complex Sentences in English Legislative Texts: Patterns and Translation Strategies

Abstract

Of all the challenges a translator may encounter in the translation of English legislative texts, perhaps the greatest one lies in the rendition of syntactically complex sentences into the target language. In order to overcome such a challenge, the translator needs to be aware of three factors: the internal structure of the complex sentence, the relationship between a given constituent and its mobility in translation and, finally, the techniques typically used by experienced translators to reconstruct the sentence in the target language. To this end, the researchers endeavored to identify the most common elements in the complex sentence in English legislative writing. They attempted to decide, exemplify, and analyze cases where a correlation can be established between a given English grammatical constituent and the position(s) at which the constituent may be placed in the Arabic translated sentence. They also tried to determine the techniques the United Nations translators tend to use to reassemble the sentence in Arabic and consider the implications for translation pedagogy. .