engleski

Uses of the verb shall in maritime legal texts in English and their Croatian translations

The paper investigates the use of the modal verb shall in maritime legal texts. The analysis was carried out on a parallel corpus of two maritime legal texts written in English and their translations into Croatian. The tool Sketch Engine, borrowed from the field of corpus linguistics, was used in the analysis. The analysis has shown that the modal verb shall is frequently used in maritime legal texts with a variety of different meanings, which make the interpretation and translation of such texts rather challenging at times. Such semantic diversity at the same time violates the main requirements for the legal texts to be clear, precise and unambiguous. Also, the analysis of translated texts shows that the typical way in which the modal verb shall is translated into Croatian is by simple use of the main verb, instead of the verb shall, in present tense, which is a reflection of the traditional legal drafting technique in Croatian legislation and at the same time a tool which resolves some of the issues pertaining to the ambiguous use of the verb shall in legal documents in English, making translated documents in this case more accessible to users.

maritime legal texts, modal verb shall, parallel corpus, drafting technique

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