TRANSLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LEGAL TEXT: COGNITIVE-PRAGMATIC AND LINGUISTIC ASPECTS

Abstract

Introduction. The article offers a linguistic analysis of the pragmatic transformations in the target international-legal text viewed as a means of clarifying the strategic program of the source text. The urgency of the chosen topic is due to the association of the problem with the research principles and methodology of a new cognitive-discursive scientific paradigm in view of the paper’s focus on the source and target text’s cognitive-conceptual and pragmatic adequacy.Purpose. The paper aims to prove the hypothesis that pragmatic transformations in the target text result from the translators’ interpreting the cognitive-communicative strategies of the original text in the aspect of accentuation a certain aspect of the legal relationship – its object, subject, conditions and scope of application.Methods. To achieve the purpose a set of methods is applied, including the cognitiveconceptual analysis, pragmatic analysis to determine the strategies of the international legal text-original as well as the elements of the methods of contextual interpretation analysis and analysis of pragmatic transformations, based on a new typology of translation transformations.Results. The major results refer to the main factors to cause the pragmatic transformations, as well as to their linguistic markers specified as the signs of the original text’ internal dialogicity that, on the one hand, iconically reproduces the complexities of the negotiation process and, on the other hand, reflects the dichotomy of international legal concepts of "common good" and "sovereignty". It is shown that the strategies of translation and the types of the chosen pragmatic transformations, reflects the translator's stance towards the normative article’s meaning and the denoted legal relations.Conclusions. Summing up, the author arrives at the conclusions about the pragmatic transformations’ communicative potential to influence the meaning of the text-original, tactically modifying its strategies by specifying, narrowing or expanding the articles’ normative content.