Peripherical Means of Translation Adaptation of Modality in Ukrainian Translations of English-Based International Legal Texts

Abstract

The article analyzes the specifics of adaptation of deontic modality in the Ukrainian translations of English-based international soft law discourse.  The purpose of the article is identification of the peripheral means of translation adaptation of modality resulting in de-intensifying the legal force of the international legal documents. The article applies the principal method of comparative translation analysis aimed at comparing peripheral means of de-intensification of deontic modality in the English-language output texts and in the target texts of the Ukrainian translation. Additional methods have involved componential analysis - to substantiate the translation transformations of lexical-semantic generalization, as well as the contextual-interpretive and speech acts analyses.

The research reached the following main results. The legal force of the international documents is primarily based on speech acts of directives and commissives differing in their illocutionary force, which conveys the deontic modality of orders / obligations, recommendations, and self-obligations. The adaptive tactics of mitigation are used in soft law target texts to implement the strategy of de-intensification of primarily directive and commissive illocutionary forces and their associating deontic modality. Adaptive tactics are implemented by peripheral adaptive techniques. The most common techniques include the transformations of adding the noun-mitigator "можливість" (possibility) as well as transformations of adding the hedges that are represented either in one-word or by expanded structure and transformations of adding semantically redundant phrases. The less frequent adaptive techniques, identified by the paper include the transformation of lexical-semantic generalization - with replacing the key verb-predicate to denote the actions to be performed by the parties, with a verb, characterized by semantic loss of the seme "obligation". Other adaptive techniques involve the marked theme, which distracts from the agent of action by placing the adverbial structure at the beginning of phrase as well as the syntactical transformations of transposition in combination with modulation.