Teaching Translation of Basic Corporate Terms: Fundamental Principles

Abstract

The article addresses a methodological approach introducing future translators to basic terms of a specific field exemplified by those related to the activities of companies. The authors consolidate their experience of teaching translation for sphere of business to students of linguistics, on the one hand, and teaching translation and legal English to future lawyers, on the other hand, paying special attention to the correlation of language and content. Teaching business translation has a close connection to the content of the corporate area. This implies familiarizing oneself with a large number of terms related to companies’ activities and extensive conceptual contexts in professional areas. Senior students have already learned that translation extends beyond the level of lexical meanings to culture and mentality, though the latter is not so widely represented in the cognitive-oriented texts. Consequently, legal translation tends to be mistakenly associated with reproducing some most obvious equivalents from a vocabulary list. At this stage, students require clear understanding that translation also covers the level of legal systems or traditions in a specific area. With future translators being unfamiliar with corporate and legal areas, the task is more complicated; practice and extralinguistic explanatory context are both absent. What becomes vitally important under the circumstances is a high level of methodological competence aimed at forming autonomous learning skills in specialised translation in general, as well as providing a variety of exercises to maintain motivation and students’ active involvement in mastering both language and content components.

References

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