The textual fit of translated EU law: a corpus-based study of deontic modality

Abstract

This paper discusses the textual fit of translated EU law – that is, how its language differs from that of nontranslated Polish law – at the level of deontic modality patterns. The study is part of a larger three-year project and was conducted on the following multilingual comparative corpora: (1) The Polish Translation JRC Acquis Corpus, a corpus of acquis built by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre from which regulations and directives were isolated as separate sub-corpora (14.7m and 7.2m words, respectively), and corresponding English versions of translated regulations and directives. Translated regulations become automatically binding law in Poland while directives undergo intralingual translation by transposition into national law; (2) The reference corpus compiled by the author – the Polish Law Corpus, of 6.8m words, comprising Polish statutes as a source of naturally occurring legal Polish.The primary functions of law are to impose duty and to confer power. As a result, the language of the law is marked by a high frequency of deontic modals because of its need to express obligation and permission. Obligation and permission-coding modals are strong genre markers and have very high salience in translated and nontranslated law. However, they have a strikingly different distribution across the corpora, as well as within each corpus (between resolutions and directives as well as between codes and ordinary statutes of Polish law), with most modals ranking high in keywords lists. In Polish legislation, obligation and permission are mainly expressed through semi-modals, present tense and special phrasemes (e.g. jest obowiązany do ‘is obliged to’), which are not prompted in translated language. The distribution of modals in the Polish version of EU law directly reflects source language modality patterns, pointing to strong interference, overreliance on literal translation techniques and lack of normalisation to generic conventions of legislative Polish. The differences may also be attributed to a different structure of EU legal instruments (extensive non-normative preambles), the institutional culture of translating (guidelines for translators on how to translate certain modals) and power relations (interaction between majority and minority culture). In view of other differences between translated and nontranslated law, it may be argued that the low textual fit of translated law creates a distinct, more ‘European’ genre within the Polish language of the law, invading the integrity of and colonising the national genre. Such departures from generic conventions require a greater cognitive effort on the part of the reader and may increase interpretive doubts.