Teaching translation of specialised legal texts – on the basis of official documents (birth certificates)

Abstract

The main concern of the article is to present ideas about how to teach translation of specialised texts. Such a topic was dictated by the need to educate students in that particular kind of translation, as they are going to deal with a growing number of specialised texts to translate in their future work as translators. Such translations need to be carried out according to a scheduled process. The article, presenting its stages, may be a source of reference to teachers of specialised translation, and also to students. The proposed model of translation is based on analysing parallel texts. The texts are birth certificates in English and Polish, as they represent a concise form of specialised legal texts, on the basis of which the particular stages of translation seem easy to demonstrate. The analyses are performed according to criteria determined to be indispensable for carrying out a translation of specialised texts, among which are reference to layout, vocabulary, grammatical constructions and style of language.