The aspects of translation of Polish and German documents in foreign judicial cooperation in civil cases

Abstract

The present paper focuses on challenges in the translation of Polish and German documents in foreign judicial cooperation based on documents concerning maintenance recovery abroad. The paper is divided into two sections. The first part of the paper presents the legal basis regulating judicial cooperation at the international level. The second part is devoted to the discussion of translation difficulties which result from linguistic and cultural differences as well as from differences between the Polish legal system and the legal systems of Germany and Austria. Translation problems are analyzed on the basis of three groups of legal terms. The first group includes names of documents, official letters and evidence; the second one comprises names of legal subjects and persons participating in legal transactions. And finally, in the third group names of legal objects and legal institutions are presented. The main difficulty is potential untranslatability because of the lack of equivalent terms in the target language. Apart from that, different equivalent terms exist depending on in which German- speaking country the translated text will be used. Special attention is paid to parallel texts which allow the translator to overcome these difficulties. The essential conclusion is that the translator of legal texts cannot only rely on bilingual dictionaries but s/he has to use parallel texts to produce an appropriate translation and make the translated text understandable for the target language reader.