Introducing Literary Texts in Legal Translations Class

Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on New Approaches in Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Introducing Literary Texts in Legal Translations Class

Katarzyna Cieplińska

ABSTRACT: 

Introducing literary texts in legal translations class is a motivating way to help university students of the course develop understanding of legal concepts. Students of humanities often encounter various difficulties connected with legal terms in the process of gaining the translating competence. The obstacles include differences in various legal systems. In specialist translations from Polish into English and from English into Polish, future translators deal with juxtaposition of case law versus Polish jurisprudence practice. From the point of view of court issues or a court process, many terms have no counterparts. Enriching the syllabus with a specific literary text may provide clear examples of concepts and avoid such linguistic traps like false friends, terms differently used in British and American English or terms that have no precise equivalents due to systemic discrepancies. The literary text presented in the article is The King of Torts by John Grisham, a novel that may be used in classroom for discussing such concepts as tors and other definitions often found misleading by Polish students.

keywords: competence; false friends; case law; syllabus; torts.