English is a language commonly used across the globe for obtaining various information and knowledge from many sources. It may be seen from numerous media using English, from newspapers, scientific and non-scientific books, etc. Â Of these facts, there is one type of compulsory text as a source material of English learning, which is formal and highly structured, i.e. Legal Text. Â This Legal Text has various forms, the easily recognizable forms are Birth Certificates, Formal and Non-Formal Education Certificates, etc. Some of these forms may be difficult to handle when translated into English if one fails to comprehend the principles of legal terminology translation, which are obviously different in the culture of each English-speaking country.
English legal text translation falls into the category of special text translation, also covering the holy book translation. In respect of translation in these two aspects, it may be concluded that this type of text translation must be recognized and formalized so that its translation must also be authorized to produce it on several conditions.
In order to understand how to learn English properly so as to be able to translate any English text, it would be better if we could observe three priorities in the translation of English legal text requiring specific reasoning, methodology and procedures to produce correct and excellent results:
- An excellent translation must be accurate and congruent/equivalent when viewed from the linguistic or legal aspect as the contents thereof. More precisely, please pay attention to the semantic aspect (meaning) so as to avoid any misinterpretation.
- The most significant benchmark in translation is equivalence of meaning between the source text and the target text. Translation will be deemed incorrect if it distorts the referential meaning or alter the meaning of the source text.
- Of several translation methods largely known by the English translation society, Faithful-Semantic Translation is one of the English legal text translation methods frequently used, as we must remain ‘faithful’ to the source text and follow the register, style, and level of formality in the legal language.