Equivalence of Lease and Tenancy Terminology in English and Lithuanian

Abstract

Abstract Prompted by globalization and the importance of international communication in the legal sphere, legal language acquires an increasing importance. Contract law draws special attention in the EU and worldwide, and raises a demand for harmonization of the legal terminology of different languages and legal systems. Contracts in Anglo- Saxon and Lithuanian law have similar basic elements; however, they also contain significant differences which are determined by the regulations of the legal systems in which contracts are formed. The terminology used in the contracts also presents important peculiarities. The article focuses on the terminology of lease and tenancy agreements and provides results of the contrastive semantic analysis, the aim of which is to establish the degree of equivalence of the collected English terms and their Lithuanian counterparts. All investigated English terms have synonyms, which makes the task even more complex, as most of such synonyms have certain semantic differences and may be used interchangeably only in certain contexts. The findings of the research are believed to be valuable to legal translators, as well as compilers of legal dictionaries and databases.