Incongruity of civil law terms under German, British and Ukrainian legal systems – case study

Abstract

In the paper there are analysed fi ve British and German incongruent civil law terms. German terms appear in the German act of law called Bürgerlicher Gesetzbuch. British terms name the terms characteristic of each of the three separate legal systems: of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. All terms constitute legal terms according to the defi nition by Morawski. The research problem is to verify whether the published typology of translation methods used in the Polish-English translation of succession and family law terms (which are civil law terms) encompasses translation methods applied when translating civil terms from German into English. The term translation method is defi ned according to Hejwowski. In order to determine the translation methods applied while producing equivalents, the definitions of the source terms and the equivalents in question are analysed. Furthermore, the appearance of the suggested equivalents in the sources of the British law as well as the corpora of the English language is verified. Finally, having examined the translation methods employed, it is concluded that the equivalents suggested have been formed with the application of as many as 4 different methods listed in the abovementioned classification. Moreover, the Ukrainian terms denoting the legal institutions discussed have been analysed compared to the Polish terms. With regard to the translation of the terms under analysis from Ukrainian into English two different methods have been employed.