A Descriptive Analysis on Quasi-Legal Language in Lease Contracts

Abstract

Despite the high frequency of the specific field translation, there are considerably few studies on the translation of the non-literary (non-fictional) texts. Accordingly, this study was pursued to elaborate one specific legal genre, namely lease contracts, by describing its textually-defined linguistic units within the lexical and syntactic framework. Upon analysing a limited corpus of Turkish leasing contracts (as source texts) and those of English (as source and target texts), it has been found out that like other similar legal texts, they embrace such impartial usages as the gender-neutral pronouns and conspicuously stated common nouns. Unlike the other normative texts, these lease contracts include shorter sentences and few archaic words and structures, and active voice rather than passive voice is used in the verbs of their main clauses. When contrasting with the other legally enforceable texts, these textually-defined linguistic units of the corpus can be associated with a plain language usage; thus, it can be stated that a quasi-legal language is used in these lease contracts. Obviously, by virtue of this quasi-legal language, all the parties with different educational, economic, and cultural backgrounds as well as having different levels of experience and knowledge on leasing may comprehend the contractual terms much more easily.