Search

Ad hoc corpora are considered effective to deliver native-like technical (and legal) translation. This paper explores how the translation of a system-specific document such as an Italian procura alle liti (power of attorney to appear in court) can be addressed. Translating this legal document may be problematic due to the fact that it is not recurrent in the common law system, which contemplates other types of special powers of attorney (PoAs). This paper explores whether and to what extent a corpus-based translation is possible when L2 parallel texts are difficult to find in native contexts. To this aim, a translation project with technical translators and lawyers is carried out. The participants compose an ad hoc corpus which they consult as a language reference tool. The paper findings report that the translators' corpus-based translation is mostly a word-by-word rendering of the source text, which may sound unnatural to an expert of the field. The lawyers' translation partly deviates from source words, but addresses the communicative function of the source text. The paper highlights the need for a balance between the two strategies, for example by focusing on textual functionality and/or paraphrasing, although at the cost of a reduced formulaicity.

Forensic Linguistics as a discipline has gone through more than 30 years of development in China, which can be divided into the brewing period, the establishment and development period, and the comprehensive improvement period. Scholars have presented the origin and development of forensic linguistics in the form of papers, monographs, translations, textbooks, seminars, conferences and other forms, which promotes the future development of forensic linguistics. In the past decade, the study of forensic linguistics has mainly focused on the theoretical research of forensic linguistics, the application of legislative and judicial language, the translation and teaching of legal language. This paper will adopt the method of literature research to summarize the origin and development of Chinese forensic linguistics in the past 30 years, and to anticipate the future development direction of forensic linguistics in the light of the current research characteristics and the hotspot of the times, so as to provide references for the theoretical development and application practice of current forensic linguistics, and to better guide future discipline development in China.

THE NAME MOWA CHACHŁACKA (KHAKHOL LANGUAGE) IN ACCOUNTS FROM DISPLACED POST-WAR MIGRANTS FROM THE EAST TO WESTERN POLAND This paper concerns the usage of the linguonym mowa chachłacka (Khakhol language) in Galicia, Podolia and Volhynia during the first half of the 20th Century. Therefore, it can be considered in the realm of historical sociolinguistics. The source material is comprised of interviews, recorded 1992–2006, with over 100 forced migrants from eastern voivodeships of the interwar Second Polish Republic. After World War 2, the respondents were resettled from their home towns into the new borders of post-war Poland, areas which belonged to Germany until 1945. The research method chosen was partially standardized interviews, which were first recorded and then written down. The paper is focused around the following issues: 1) which linguistic variety was referred to as mowa chachłacka in the interwar period within the researched communities, 2) whether this name contained a value judgement, 3) what was the prestige of mowa chachłacka in these communities. The first chapter of the paper concerns the history of the Russian lexeme хохол/хaхол, which forms the basis of the linguonym mowa chachłacka, and which has been used since the 17th Century to refer to Ukrainians. The article takes into account ideas concerning researching social attitudes to a language, such as standard language ideology and monoglossic ideology.

VERBAL BORROWINGS FROM LATIN IN OLD POLISH The paper focuses on direct verbal borrowings from Latin into Old Polish. It attempts to determine the exact number of these borrowings and to describe the possible reasons for it being rather small in comparison with nominal borrowings. In the initial parts, some introductory remarks are made on verbal borrowings in general and Polish–Latin language contact in Middle Ages. The main part of the paper discusses the etymology of four Old Polish verbs: koronować ~ korunować, obligować się, ufundować and sylabizować. The final part contains general remarks and conclusions.

The ‘migration’ of concepts from one language to another, which takes place in cultural exchange, frequently gives rise to changes in the target language, primarily involving the lexical field. The reception of the Romanist legal tradition in China has led to the formation of a specialized lexicon which, along with the translation and production of Roman law-related works, has been subject to constant growth. This kind of terminological transposition has often resulted in the emergence in Chinese of more than one translatant for the same Latin word. As a concrete example of this phenomenon, this paper aims at providing a synoptical overview of the rendering in Chinese of the concepts of dolus and culpa, two legal institutions also largely connected to the field of commercial law. The sources analyzed from a diachronic and contrastive perspective range from the earliest manuals of Roman law published in China at the beginning of the twentieth century to recent documents, translated or directly composed in Chinese. More specifically, this paper will try to answer the following questions: what is the historical evolution of the main terms used in Chinese to express the concepts of dolus and culpa? What are the criteria adopted by Chinese translators/authors in choosing these terms? What are the main features and issues related to the linguistic rendering of the two legal institutions? As for the results of this study, attention will be paid to one of the peculiarities of the linguistic rendering of the concept of culpa, that is the use of two different translatants: guoshi 过失 and guocuo 过错. At the same time, another aspect on which this paper will shed light is the existence of a plethora of translatants related to the concept of dolus (qizha 欺诈, guyi 故意, zhaqi 诈欺, etc.). In this sense, on the one hand, it will be shown how the presence of multiple translatants is acceptable and useful when they are used to express the different shades of meaning conveyed by dolus and culpa that cannot be rendered by means of one single translatant for each of these two notions; on the other hand, this paper will highlight the necessity of a higher homogeneity and standardization of the Chinese Romanist lexicon.

Fixed lexical or syntactical expressions and formulae hallmark legal language. They serve both linguistic and legal purposes, and should be rendered accordingly in a target language and legal system. Most of the times, however, formulaic expressions are translated by resorting to calques, false cognates, or phrases that are uncommon in the target legal language (and legal system). This paper is aimed at exploring how and if corpus analysis can dispel doubts and help find acceptable translation candidates. As there are currently no publicly available legal corpora addressing corporate documents such as contracts and agreements, this paper wishes to bridge this gap by building and relying on an ad hoc corpus of authentic agreements written in English as a first language according to the laws of England and Wales. In this way, corpus evidence can help find equivalents and, possibly, address recurrent mistranslations from Italian into English. During the corpus analysis process, the paper shows and discusses search queries and how equivalents can be obtained. At the same time, it questions dictionary entries. The paper findings highlight that the consultation of the ad hoc corpus allows to find acceptable translations of Italian legal formulae and address recurrent mistranslations. English formulaic expressions, in fact, can be rendered satisfactorily thanks to the possibility of noticing word usages in context, keywords in contexts and collocations. Further research can encompass a wider variety of formulae and/or legal documents so that scholars and translators can be equipped with useful reference tools.

The paper focuses on time marks that may be detected in common law agreements and the translation issues they imply. In the first section, the author discusses the relation between time and law. The legal time governs the social time, as it ensures order and security. If memory is the manifestation of the legal past, the promise is the expression of the legal future. Depending on the legal culture taken into account, the legislator’s time may be more or less important than the time of the judge. The second section of the paper deals with time avatars that may be identified at the macrotextual level. The contract is understood as a promise that becomes obligation. The legal time is also expressed in contracts by the predictive capability of the parties, its acceleration and backwardness, its finiteness. The last section is an analysis of the translation of terms, collocations and metaphors expressing time in common law contracts.

Several are the European Directives dedicated to e-commerce, focussing on consumer rights, the distance marketing of consumer financial services and the protection of consumers indistance contracts.In contract law, the terms “termination”, “withdrawal”and “cancellation”have peculiar and distinct meaning. Nonetheless, they tend to be misused and applied interchangeably. This article will shed light on these relevant terms in thelight of EU Directives on the protection of consumer rights in off-premises and distance contracts.To do so, it will first present instances in which the meaningand use of these terms is either clear-cut or somehow blurred. By analysing word usage and meaning in context, it will explore how EU Directives, and EU drafters in general, made(un)ambiguous distinctions. Then, it will investigate whether English-speaking drafters (such as those of the pre-Brexit UK, Ireland and Malta) made a consistent use ofsuch terms. Finally, this paper will explore whether online conditions of sale writtenin English by non-English speaking sellers or traders (such as Italian and Polish) also make a consistent use of the terms.The paper findings highlight that the use andlegal purpose of these terms in European Directives have not been particularly consistent over the years. Furthermore, Member States’system-specificity has weighed on the meaning, application and scope of the terms. On the other hand, at EU level the absence of a unique legal system of reference and the challenges of harmonization may have created false equivalences.

This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports which is divided into two narrative types, the objective and the semi-dialogic. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts in the two types, it finds that the differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor’s students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

IS IT STILL WORTH RESEARCHING GREEK AND LATIN LOANWORDS IN OLD POLISH? (AND HOW SHOULD WE DO IT?) The paper focuses on Greek and Latin loanwords in Old Polish language. It attempts to show what has already been done and what still needs to be done in this important issue. Three main aspects are discussed: (1) definitions of the terms loanword, Latinism, Hellenism, and the problem of direct and indirect borrowing; (2) the current state of investigation of Greek and Latin loanwords in Old Polish; (3) the Old Polish Christian terminology – the problem of chronology and borrowing channels of Greek and Latin Christian words to Old Polish. The final part of the paper contains a brief research history i.e. it describes the most important works in chronological order.

This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts, this paper finds the following points: English and Chinese legal news generally have two narrative types: objective narrative and semi-dialogic narrative. The differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.

Several are the European Directives dedicated to e-commerce, focussing on consumer rights, the distance marketing of consumer financial services and the protection of consumers in distance contracts. In contract law, the terms “termination”, “withdrawal” and “cancellation” have peculiar and distinct meaning. Nonetheless, they tend to be misused and applied interchangeably. This article will shed light on these relevant terms in the light of EU Directives on the protection of consumer rights in off-premises and distance contracts. To do so, it will first present instances in which the meaning and use of these terms is either clear-cut or somehow blurred. By analysing word usage and meaning in context, it will explore how EU Directives, and EU drafters in general, made (un)ambiguous distinctions. Then, it will investigate whether English-speaking drafters (such as those of the pre-Brexit UK, Ireland and Malta) made a consistent use of such terms. Finally, this paper will explore whether online conditions of sale written in English by non-English speaking sellers or traders (such as Italian and Polish) also make a consistent use of the terms. The paper findings highlight that the use and legal purpose of these terms in European Directives have not been particularly consistent over the years. Furthermore, Member States’ system-specificity has weighed on the meaning, application and scope of the terms. On the other hand, at EU level the absence of a unique legal system of reference and the challenges of harmonization may have created false equivalences.

Language and Linguistics According to Krystyna Pisarkowa (1932–2010) Krystyna Pisarkowa’s rich output is characterised by a variety of forms and a wide range of topics, as well as an innovative interpretation of linguistic phenomena. The following paper can be described as biographical and substantive. The text contains certain facts from Pisarkowa’s life that are connected with certain spheres of her scientific activity in which she succeeded, references to people who played a significant role in her life, as well as development of her research interests. The publications which are mentioned in the paper have been selected according to Pisarkowa’s attitude to language, its essence, pragmatic-functional-stylistic variety, as well as potential context and purpose which lies beyond its typical usage. Moreover, an attempt has been made at reconstructing Pisarkowa’s views on the range, shape and place of linguistics among humanistic disciplines.

This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts, this paper finds the following points: English and Chinese legal news generally have two narrative types: objective narrative and semi-dialogic narrative. The differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.

Several are the European Directives dedicated to e-commerce, focussing on consumer rights, the distance marketing of consumer financial services and the protection of consumers in distance contracts. In contract law, the terms “termination”, “withdrawal” and “cancellation” have peculiar and distinct meaning. Nonetheless, they tend to be misused and applied interchangeably. This article will shed light on these relevant terms in the light of EU Directives on the protection of consumer rights in off-premises and distance contracts. To do so, it will first present instances in which the meaning and use of these terms is either clear-cut or somehow blurred. By analysing word usage and meaning in context, it will explore how EU Directives, and EU drafters in general, made (un)ambiguous distinctions. Then, it will investigate whether English-speaking drafters (such as those of the pre-Brexit UK, Ireland and Malta) made a consistent use of such terms. Finally, this paper will explore whether online conditions of sale written in English by non-English speaking sellers or traders (such as Italian and Polish) also make a consistent use of the terms. The paper findings highlight that the use and legal purpose of these terms in European Directives have not been particularly consistent over the years. Furthermore, Member States’ system-specificity has weighed on the meaning, application and scope of the terms. On the other hand, at EU level the absence of a unique legal system of reference and the challenges of harmonization may have created false equivalences.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor's students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor's students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor's students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between.

A human right to the environment is increasingly recognised in both domestic and international law. Also in Polish legal scholarship, there is a discussion over the possibility of deriving a right to the environment from the Constitution or ordinary statutes, including Article 4(1) of the Environmental Protection Law Act. The existing English translations of its opening words, and specifically the term powszechne korzystanie ze środowiska, appear to mirror the legal controversy. Compared to Poland, the major common law jurisdictions, i.e. England and the USA, show multiple differences in respect of the public’s enjoyment of the environment. In addition to a distinct legal mentalité, grounded on a case-by-case approach, negative freedoms and remedies thinking, both jurisdictions are characterised by considerable private ownership of natural resources like rivers and forests. In view of this legal and translation problem, the present paper seeks to employ comparative law methodology to establish an acceptable English translation equivalent of the term powszechne korzystanie ze środowiska. The analysis is also an attempt to go beyond the ways in which the use of comparative law in legal translation is typically perceived, i.e., beyond functionalism, beyond micorcomparison and beyond conceptual analysis.

Cracow-Lviv Roots of Wrocław Slavic Studies The paper discusses the beginnings of Polish and Slavic linguistics at the Univertsity of Wroclaw directly after World War II. It was created by young scholars, linguists, Slavicists and Polonists, who gained their education and academic degrees at the Jagiellonian University and the John Casimir University in Lviv. This group included primarily S. Rospond, L. Ossowski, W. Kuraszkiewicz, S. Bąk, all educated before the war, as well as A. Furdal, much younger than the others and educated already after the war. These scholars received their education under the guidance of the best Polish linguists, Slavicists, Polonists, and Indo-Europeanists. In addition, the paper presents basic information about preparations made in Cracow during the war, to create Polish and Slavic studies at the University of Wroclaw.

Reflections on the Conception of the History of Polish Linguistics The author explains his reason for taking up the topic by recalling his discussions with prof. Mirosław Skarżyński and encouraging him to prepare a publication in which he would present his conception of the history of Polish linguistics. Prof. Skarżyński will not write this paper any more, so this author decided to present his own reflections on the matter. He begins with the first grammar of Polish, Polonicae grammatices institutio, published in 1568 by a Frenchman Piotr Statorius-Stojeński, for foreigners who wish to learn the language. He presents the work against the European background, and shows that it belongs to the great European movement of the 16th century, of preparing descriptions of contemporary languages. This author proposes that the publication of Statorius’ grammar, and of Jan Mączyński’s Latin-Polish dictionary (1564), can be considered the actual beginnings of Polish linguistics. In relation to S. Urbańczyk who tied those beginnings to year 1751, this author moves the date nearly 200 years back. He also refers to the opinions of historians of science. The paper concludes with remarks on the place of applied linguistics and glottodidactics in Polish linguistics.

Language Policy in Poland in the Context of the Impact of English on Polish The paper examines the way and the extent to which language policies have affected the development of the Polish language. However, the purpose of the present paper is to highlight the change in attitude towards the increasing impact of English on Polish. The influence of English became more prominent in Poland after the change in the political system in 1989, and has for the most part been in the area of lexical borrowings. However, the influence of English is not only restricted to the inflow of English loanwords, but also extends to their relatively high frequency of usage. In addition, there is evidence of other types of influence that are non-lexical. However, the impact of English on Polish has not been as extensive as is claimed by some Polish linguists who since the early 1990s have lamented over the decline of the Polish language caused by the ”flood” of British and American English borrowings. Indeed, the status of English as a lingua franca was considered itself to be a threat to Polish, with even the possibility of the extinction of the tongue. This concern about language purity led to the creation of the Polish Language Council in 1996, whose aim has been to advise on and describe (rather than prescribe) linguistic behaviours among Polish language users. This legislative body was behind the Polish Language Act passed in 1999. Its purpose, however, has been to protect Polish rather than to purify it and to minimize the foreign influences (which mainly refer to English) rather than to eradicate them. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Polish linguists’ attitude towards the ”Anglicization” of the Polish language has changed dramatically and it is now believed that the influence of English makes Polish richer and more globalized.

“Talking after somebody”. A Language Without Communication The paper examines “talking after somebody”, i.e. the phenomenon of echolalia which is especially characteristic for low-functioning people with autism. The paper shows that such speech is unintentional and uncommunicative. The language of autistic persons also does not fulfill the causative or persuasive role. It does, however, perform the function of uncoscious self-stimulation for those people. According to therapists, this type of behaviour should be eliminated at all cost.

Identification of *-(j)ū-stems in polish and slavic material The paper discusses the question of the substitution of the stem suffix *-ъv- for the suffix *-ъka, which converts words from the *-(j)ū- to the *-a-declension, as well as the problem of identification of original *-(j)ū-stems. An analysis of Polish and Slavic material leads to the conclusion that a part of nouns that are commonly regarded as *-(j)ū-stems have in fact a different origin: some can be derived from collective nouns in *-va (still productive in East Slavic), e.g. *kuropъtva, *plotva, *ǫtva, and a part have probably been extended with an unmotivated labial element -v- which has the appearance of a relic of a *-ū-stem, but appears most commonly after roots that end in a velar consonant or a spirant-stop sequence. The paper argues against the hypothesis about late (Proto-)Slavic activization of *-ū-stems and proposes instead that a part of this class had been eliminated at a prehistoric stage, depending on the quality of the stem consonant.

Multiaspectuality of the notion of conceptualization in Ronald Langacker’s grammar: from the perspective of a user of cognitive terminology The paper presents the scope of understanding of the notion of conceptualization, a notion that belongs to the elementary toolbox of R. Langacker’s cognitive grammar. The author shows the different perspectives of viewing conceptualization, and discusses ways of defining the term. By contrasting it with other terms from the paradigm of cognitive semantics (among others, categorization, construal, profiling, conceptualizer, spekaer, addressee, usage event), which Langacker refers to while describing the processes of conceptualization, the paper reveals the placement and status of conceptualization in cognitive grammar.

On the meaning of the adjective nieszczęsny ‘luckless’ in contemporary polish The aim of this paper is to perform a semantic analysis of the expression nieszczęsny ‘luckless’, which functions at the non-denotational level of language description. As a metatextual adjective, it is different both from the old expression of the same shape, and from contemporary adjectives which are often wrongly equated with it semantically, e.g. pechowy ‘unlucky’, żałosny ‘pitiful’, niefortunny ‘unfortunate’. The paper contains a survey of dictionary definitions of both homonymous units (i.e. the old and the contemporary adjective nieszczęsny), a characterization of the collocation of the expression nieszczęsny, as well as of words that are semantically associated with it (including the adjective nieszczęśliwy ‘unhappy’). Moreover, the article discusses problems which directly affect the findings regarding the semantic specificity of nieszczęsny (the issue of the subject of predication, the question of reference). It concludes with a proposal of explication of the meaning of the analysed unit.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

This paper will explore how consulting the BoLC (Bononia Legal Corpus; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini and Martelli 2007) can be helpful and advantageous when tackling legal translations. To this aim, a 4-hour trial lesson with experienced translators was organized. Before the workshop, the participants translated a 300-word legal document issued within a civil case. Their translations (from English to Italian) were revised during the trial lesson, where the attendants learned how to consult the BoLC. They also used supplementary online resources, such as dictionaries and/or experts' blogs or fora. The paper findings will remark that despite some drawbacks, such as the absence of POS tagging and lemmatization, and a quite complex search syntax, the BoLC helps dispel doubts and deliver outstanding translation work. Its main usefulness lies in the possibility to find formulaic expressions and collocational use, which can be rather intricate in legal discourse.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.

This paper will explore how consulting the BoLC (Bononia Legal Corpus; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini and Martelli 2007) can be helpful and advantageous when tackling legal translations. To this aim, a 4-hour trial lesson with experienced translators was organized. Before the workshop, the participants translated a 300-word legal document issued within a civil case. Their translations (from English to Italian) were revised during the trial lesson, where the attendants learned how to consult the BoLC. They also used supplementary online resources, such as dictionaries and/or experts' blogs or fora. The paper findings will remark that despite some drawbacks, such as the absence of POS tagging and lemmatization, and a quite complex search syntax, the BoLC helps dispel doubts and deliver outstanding translation work. Its main usefulness lies in the possibility to find formulaic expressions and collocational use, which can be rather intricate in legal discourse.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.

This paper examines the notion of ‘moonlighting’, which in industrial relations discourse refers to secondary employment performed in addition to the employee’s main job. As this concept might lend itself to different interpretations in English, the aim of this paper is to consider whether the ambiguous nature of this wording in source texts is also reflected in target texts, exploring how translators deal with it when rendering this concept in other languages. To this end, documents published by international institutions in English and their translations in French, Italian and Spanish were compared and contrasted, investigating the strategies put in place by translators to convey the meaning of “moonlighting” in other languages.

The aim of this paper is to present LEX.CH.IT, a corpus for micro-diachronic linguistic investigations of Swiss normative acts in Italian. Italian has a peculiar position as an official minority translation language within the Swiss institutional system. Until now, few studies have focused on Swiss legal Italian, but the academic interest has been growing over the last two decades. In order to further expand on research in this field, resources such as corpora are fundamental. This is why LEX.CH.IT has been compiled. This corpus was originally created in the context of a doctoral research project, which will be briefly outlined in this paper. The main goals of the project are to determine whether clarity is a feature of Swiss legislation in Italian, whether there have been relevant evolutions over the last five decades and to assess the role of translation for a clear legislation. In the future, LEX.CH.IT could also be useful for a number of other projects aiming to shed light on the features of this language variety.

This paper will explore how consulting the BoLC (Bononia Legal Corpus; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini and Martelli 2007) can be helpful and advantageous when tackling legal translations. To this aim, a 4-hour trial lesson with experienced translators was organized. Before the workshop, the participants translated a 300-word legal document issued within a civil case. Their translations (from English to Italian) were revised during the trial lesson, where the attendants learned how to consult the BoLC. They also used supplementary online resources, such as dictionaries and/or experts' blogs or fora. The paper findings will remark that despite some drawbacks, such as the absence of POS tagging and lemmatization, and a quite complex search syntax, the BoLC helps dispel doubts and deliver outstanding translation work. Its main usefulness lies in the possibility to find formulaic expressions and collocational use, which can be rather intricate in legal discourse.

Witold Mańczak’s Hypothesis about the Finno-Ugric Substrate in the Baltic Languages The paper discusses Witold Mańczak’s hypothesis concerning a Finnic (particularly Balto-Finnic) substrate in the Baltic languages (Mańczak 1990: 29–38; 1993: 151; 2008: 149–152), as well as J. H. Holst’s critical evaluation of the problem (Holst 2015: 151–173). Mańczak lists as many as ten arguments in support of the substrate theory: According to Meillet (1925: 100–101), the disappearance of the neuter gender in Lithuanian and Latvian occurred under the influence of Balto-Finnic languages, since the category of gender is absent from Finno-Ugric; Old Lithuanian displays secondary local cases (i.e. illative, allative, adessive, ines-sive), formed using postpositions according to the Finno-Ugric pattern (Meillet 1925: 101); The Lithuanian constructions expressing evidentiality (e.g. Lith. nešęs velnias ak-menį) – as well as their Latvian counterparts – appeared due to substrate influence, according to Pisani (1959: 217); The Lithuanian numerals 11–19 ending in -lika (e.g, Lith. vienúolika ‘eleven’, dvýlika ‘twelve’, etc.) are of substrate origin (Pisani 1959: 217); The particle of the Lithuanian imperative -ki or -k (e.g. OLith. dúoki ‘give’) – repro-duces a similar particle known from Finnish, according to some scholars (Топоров, Трубачев 1962: 249–250); The alternation of voiced and voiceless consonants like blekai / plekai ‘tripe’ (Kiparsky 1968: 76–90 lists 200 such doublets in Latvian and 50 in Lithuanian) may be caused by the influence of a Finno-Ugric substratum, since the Finno-Ugric lan-guages used to lack voiced consonants; There are Common Baltic terms of Finno-Ugric origin, e.g. the name for ‘amber’: OPrus. gentars, Lith. giñtaras, Latv. dzĩtars m. ‘amber’ (Bednarczuk 1976: 47–48). The use of the genitive instead of an adjective in East Baltic (e.g. Lith. lietuvių kalba ‘Lithuanian language’, Latv. latviešu valoda ‘Latvian language’), unknown in other Indo-European languages, arose through Balto-Finnic influence – cf. Finnish suomen kieli ‘Finnish language’, Est. eesti keel ‘Estonian language’ (Bednarczuk 1968). The territory of Latvia abounds in hydronyms of Finnic provenance, while in Lithuania we may identify the name Nemunas (chief river in the area) as well as ca. 30 other river names of potential Finno-Ugric origin (Zinkevičius 1984: 155). The non-distinction of grammatical number in third-person finite verb forms in Lithua-nian, Latvian and Old Prussian was, according to some researchers (e.g. Thomason, Kaufman 1988: 243), caused by Balto-Finnic influence. Besides, the present author reviews Holst’s critical paper on the theory of a Uralic substratum in Common Baltic.

On the Challenges and Tasks of Linguistic Memory Research The paper summarizes the first stage of development of a new subfield of linguistics known as linguistic memory research, and poses three questions which are important for its further development: what are the mutual relations and tangents between language and memory (both individual and collective), what are the mutual relations between linguistic memory research and the related field of cognitive ethnolinguistics (as well as such disciplines in humanities as historiography and theoretical archaeology), and lastly, in what areas can linguistic memory research and ethnolinguistics support each other most effectively. A greater part of the paper is devoted to a brief overview of the ten problem areas in memory research, and a presentation of specific tasks posed before linguists by questions concentrated in those areas: from the determination of the role of memory in the processes of lexicalization and phraseologization, through the classification of verbal (phonic, lexical, phraseological, syntactic, genre-related, etc.) exponents of memory, and the determination of their role in the learning of aspects of individual and collective memory, up to an analysis of the role of the given ethnic language in the building of large mental constructs interepreting the reality, such as collective memory, linguistic image of the world, and community knowledge.

Professor Zenon Klemensiewicz as the Editor of “Język Polski” The paper presents the activity and achievements of Professor Zenon Klemensiewicz as the editor of the “Język Polski” journal (‘The Polish Language’), the official publication of The Society of Friends of the Polish Language (Towarzystwo Miłośników Języka Polskiego). Klemensiewicz became the editor in the end of 1958, and performed his duties until his death in a plane crash, on April 2, 1969. The author identifies the most important of Klemensiewicz’s achievements at the position of the editor: the extension of the editorial board of the journal, the introduction of new authors and numerous papers representing the most recent (in the 1960s) linguistic trends, such as structural and generative linguistics, text linguistics, press discourse analysis, as well as the increase of the circulation of the journal and its importance for the Polish linguistic community as well as for other groups of its readers.

The Observer and His Position in Tadeusz Borowski’s Short Story Odwiedziny (‘The Visit’) The article is an analysis of Tadeusz Borowski’s short story Odwiedziny (‘The visit’). It focuses on linguistic and narrative devices through which the speaker influences the recipient’s perception, and so shapes the reading of his work. The first part is introductory, it presents the goals of the paper. The next part recalls the most important existing interpretations, both of Borowski’s literary output as a whole, and of the text at hand. They form the starting point to an analysis of the position of the character-narrator with regard to the events he is describing, and to the relation between the author, the narrator, and the main character of the story. These considerations constitute the third part of the present paper. It begins with a citation of the full text of the story, and is followed by the main argument announced in the title which refers to Ronald Langacker’s cognitive grammar and takes into special consideration such notions as scene, current discourse space, and vantage point. The closing part of the paper contains conclusions, contrasted with the theses put forward in the context of Borowski’s work, as well as suggestions of possible directions of further analysis of the story within the framework of cognitive linguistics.

The Notion of Meaning and Its Scope in Zenon Klemensiewicz’s Conception of Syntax The goal of the paper is to reconstruct and analyse Z. Klemensiewicz’s views on the place that so- -called ‘relative meaning’ occupied in his conception of syntax. Klemensiewicz distinguished 21 types of relative meanings and gave examples of their grammatical and lexical markers. His works, reminded in this paper after nearly half a century from their publication, are treated as documents of historical value.