The translation of speech acts in Arabic legal documents: a case study of Palestine divorce contracts

Abstract

This study deals with the translation of speech acts in legal documents from Arabic into English. It aims at describing the translatability of speech acts to determine whether there are meaning loss or meaning gain and the reasons behind that. In doing so, the study follows Searle’s speech acts concept and taxonomy since Searle’s taxonomy is based on the illocutionary force of the speech act. Being a qualitative study, samples of translated divorce contracts have been collected from Palestinian sworn translators and translation certified offices. Speech acts have been identified, categorized, and analyzed based on Searle taxonomy. Then, the translation of the speech acts is analyzed in terms of the meaning of the illocutionary force of the different speech acts. The study has revealed that the illocutionary force is conveyed completely in some cases. In other cases, it is affected by the translators’ choices in using active voices instead of passive voices, present perfect and simple past instead of simple present, mistranslation of some verbs expressing directive force, probability modals instead of prohibition modals, style shift from direct speech into indirect speech, and omission of introducing verbs of speech act force. It is concluded that both sematic and pragmatic norms should be taken into consideration in translating speech acts of legal documents, which optimize Arabic - English legal translation.