TRANSLATION OF RELIGIOUS AND EXTREMIST TEXTS: FORENSIC-LINGUISTIC EXPERT EXAMINATION

Abstract

Extremism is one of the most dangerous threats to humanity in the 21st century. The spread of this phenomenon in the world is characterized not only by the increase in the number of extremist crimes, but also by the variety of their forms. Currently, translated texts and texts including foreign speech are often come on judicial proceedings of the Russian Federation concerning cases against verbal religious extremism. The article highlights theoretical basis of forensic-linguistic expertology, the tasks for translators acting as experts; the limits of competence are outlined. The authors reveal a complex of problems which appears in the process of translating religious extremist texts; determine the strategies and tactics that allow to create a product equivalent to the original text in a different language. Equivalence of translation is considered within the framework of “neutralization” concept, which should be complied with the established translation norms along with the transfer of communicative purposes in the utterance, context and linguistic peculiarities. Heterogeneous texts of Internet communication in English and French, containing religious extremist information (posts, reposts, memes, slogans, messages in social networks) were the material for the research. These types of texts have both general (multimedia, creole, hypertextuality) and distinctive features (regulation, focus on the addressee, language features). The methods of contextual, structural - semantic, comparative and linguocultural analysis were applied in the study. In general, the article is focused on specialists in the field of legal linguistics, theory and practice of translation, discourse analysis.