Pre-translation Analysis of International Legal Discourse: From Social Semiotics to the Concepts of Lotman and Bakhtin

Abstract

The discursive model of pre-translation analysis of international legal discourse relies on interrelated modules: the document conceptual space, with the harmonized value opposition between the concepts of "legal justice" and "compensatory justice", "common good" and "sovereignty"; the discourse addresser / addressee, embodied in the metonymic nomination "parties of the document"; the translator as an intermediate system, the semiospheres; extra-textual internalized realities. "Unifying" modules include semiospheres of international universal and basic branch documents, as well as universal human values and a shared internalized reality. The shared values underpin basic discursive strategies of consensus, solidarity, cooperation, marked by explicit and implicit intertextual means and additional strategies for minimizing imposition and hiding differences, implemented with tactics of generalization, mitigation and declarativeness based on passivation, nominalization, "marked theme", etc. Separating modules include semiospheres of the parties national legislations, marked by "without prejudice" clauses, metonymic nominations of "sovereign power", hedges scaling down the directive modality and idiomatic references to "public safety", etc.; semiospheres of recursive and procursive international branch texts that could be interpreted as conflicting with the document and are involved by 'non-affection' clauses and constative speech acts to fix the supremacy of one document over another. The document conceptual space may reflect the diverging interests and values of the parties, derived from implicit opposition between "legal justice" and "compensatory justice", harmonized by the documents. The markers of the "separating" modules are aimed at a combined strategy for predicting variable interpretation of particular norms with an indication of its source and normative harmonization. Keywords: International Legal Discourse, Model of Pre-Translation Analysis, Unifying and Separating Semiospheres, Value Opposition, Discourse-Forming Values.