Translation methods for dealing with the incongruity of labour law terms in the Polish and British legal systems – a case study

Abstract

The paper aims to discuss incongruent Polish and British terms referring to labour law. The terms characteristic of each of the three separate legal systems: of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland are called British terms in this paper. The Polish terms under analysis appear in the Polish Labour Code Act of 26 June 1994 and name types of benefits granted under the Polish Labour Code. The English equivalents of each Polish term researched have been used in two Polish Labour Code translations into English and have been accommodated in the most up-to-date bilingual Polish-English legal dictionary. The research problem is to verify whether the published typology of translation methods used in the Polish-English translation of civil and criminal law terms encompasses translation methods applied when translating Polish labour law terms into English. The translation methods are defined according to Hejwowski. The theoretical part of the paper includes a presentation of the definitions of a term and incongruity of terms. On the basis of the research, however, it may provisionally be presumed that the published typology of translation methods used in the translation of incongruent Polish and English civil and criminal law terms encom passes the translation methods employed when translating labour law terms into English, as the equivalents under analysis have been formed as a result of the application of as many as four out of the ten methods of the typology.