Translation of Legal Terms: A Case of The Interim Constitution of Nepal,2007

Abstract

The present study is entitled 'Translation of Legal Terms: A Case ofThe InterimConstitution of Nepal, 2007'. This studyattemptedto find out the techniquesemployed and linguistic problems in translating legal terms.Inorder to carry outthe research, one hundred legal terms were selected from the Nepali version of'TheInterimConstitution of Nepal, 2007' published by Law Books ManagementBoard, Babarmahal and corresponding wordsfromEnglish version of the samebook. Findingsof the study showed that fivedifferent techniques: literaltranslation, loan shift, transliteration,hybrid formation and paraphrasing wereadopted in translating the legalterms. Among them literal translation was the mostfrequent one which covered 92 per cent and hybrid formation was the leastfrequent one which coveredonly 1 per cent of the total legal terms. The problemsin translatinglegal terms occurred because of translingualambiguity,lack oflexicalization of thelegal concept: lexicalgapand lack of preference ofexistingTL terms. This thesis consists of four chapters: The first chapter includes the generalbackground, review of the related literature, objectives and significance of thestudy. The second chapter deals with the methodology adopted during the study which consists of sources of data,tools for data collection,process of data collection and limitationsof the study. The third chapter deals with analysis and interpretation of data. The last chapter comprises of the findings and recommendation of the study. In the final part of this thesis, references and appendix are included.