FOREIGNIZATION AND DOMESTICATION IN RUSSIAN-ENGLISH LEGAL TRANSLATION

This paper evaluates foreignizing and domesticating strategies in Russian-English legal translation. The author defines foreignization and domestication and covers the limitations and possibilities of foreignization and domestication in written and oral translations of five major types of legal documents (contracts, memoranda, judgments, case briefs, acts, and other pieces of legislation) at the levels of legal terminology, grammar, and syntax. The paper also assesses the correlation between the surface structure and the deep structure of legal texts in Russian-English language pair. It concludes that the adequate and equivalent translation of specialized legal texts requires the balanced application of the foreignizing and domesticating strategies at the lexical, grammatical, and syntactic levels. The choice of strategy depends on the type of legal document in the target language's jurisdiction (England and Wales was chosen for this research). It is suggested that domestication should be avoided in the translations of Russian federal constitutional laws, federal laws, regulations, and judgments, while in contracts, memoranda, and case briefs, foreignization is a viable strategy, sometimes even mandatory. The reason is that formal and binding legal documents, such as acts and statutes, contain much more specific legal terms, which are unique for the source jurisdiction - the Russian Federation (culture-specific professional concepts, legal terms of art, names of key institutes of law, unique branches of law). Simultaneously, the translation of the less formal documents like contracts, memoranda, legal opinions, court transcripts, corporate records, or case briefs may require a less formal approach. In these texts, domestication helps to ensure the pragmatic and functional dimensions of translation. Moreover, international business practice requires clear contract terms and plain English definitions of contract terminology. The use of archaisms and legalese in legal English is sometimes inevitable because written documents have constituted the law itself for over five hundred years in England. Yet in Russian-English pair, they should be replaced by the synonymous plain English alternatives to improve the overall quality of translation. The research results may improve the output quality of machine translation systems and legal tech software development. This study's novelty is the deepstructure analysis of legal documents and the variety of analyzed types of documents.