Lexical Level

Lexical aspects, along with those of grammar, contribute to the distinct character of legal texts and documents. Generally speaking, the vocabulary is formal and standard (utilized, acquainted with, constitute; unsupervised administration, deem; commencement, cease, substantial) complying with the norms of the style to the highest degree. It is supported by the presence of literary language; no colloquial expressions appear. Moreover, there are other essential lexical aspects pinpointing the typical picture of legal English.

Firstly, it is the traditional use of archaic expressions in which law language is abundant, such as hereafter, heretofore, herein, hereto, hereby, thereof, hereinafter, thereto and whatsoever. Lawyers tend to believe that these archaisms enable clearer and less ambiguous reference and give greater weight and authority to the language. Words like “herein” and “therein” may sometimes lead to economy of expression when they replace a longer phrase like “in this document” or “in that clause”.

The least (or even zero) occurrences of archaic expressions are in the Acts. The reason is that they are intended for the public and ordinary people, so these archaisms are replaced by relevant phrases or simply let out so that the text is fully comprehensible.

In addition, legal English has retained several morphological forms that have died out in ordinary speech. One of the archaic morphological forms is “ witnesseth ” (instead of “witness”). One can still encounter the verb form “witnesseth” in contracts of insurance: This policy witnesseth that …. In fact, “witnesseth” is now often striped of any context and placed at the beginning of contracts, as a totemic signal that rough means, “This is a legal contract; the following are its terms”.

Some lawyers prefer to use antique terms instead of new ones. For example, they use “inquire” rather than “ask”, “peruse” instead of “read”, “forthwith” as a substitution of “right away” or “at once” and so on.

The second distinct aspect is the use of technical words, or the terms of art. Every domain has its characteristic vocabulary connected to the area in which it plays part. The origin of the lexis is multilayered due to many historical events. There are borrowed words from French and Latin as well as other Romance and Germanic languages that have established as technical terms, e.g.: bequest and bequeath for give, pecuniary devises meaning money; pre-decease for to die, encumbrances for obligations; assignor and assignee, liability, to breach, duly authorised; executed the instrument meaning signed, notary public, deed, consideration for sum; disbursements for expenses; performance of powers, continuance in force, statutory instrument, criminal conduct. Here are some Latin phrases and words in common use: Bona fide (good faith or in good faith); Bes nova (a new thing; an undecided question of law); Actus reus (guilty act).

Furthermore, legal English is also specific in the use of collocations, bi-, tri- or multinomial pairs, and phrases constituted by more then two items. They are also considered very formal and are labelled technical terms. The instances are as follows: continued or saved by virtue of; in the course of and in connection with; released without charge and on bail; to confer and impose additional powers and duties; power to remove truants to designated premises; be at the applicable rate set forth; upon any termination of; under contract and prior to expiration; revoke and repeal all prior wills and codicils; residence and domicile; grant the authority to; bequeathed, transferred and gifted; beneficiary or recipient; continue in full force; waiver and relinquishment; impaired or invalidated; attached hereto and incorporated herein by reference.

Thirdly, it is not unusual to find vocabulary that originates in other domains, such economy, finance, science, trade, medicine and others. One of the conditioning aspects of such presence is what a certain document is supposed to mediate and what genre it belongs to, sometimes a term has been assimilated and is used as a legal item, e.g. pecuniary (finance), maintain and liquidate investments, preferred or common stocks (economy).

Binomial expressions. The legal register is striking for its use of binomial expressions that are a special case of parallelism. These items can be described as sequence of two words belonging to the same form class, which are syntactically coordinate and semantically related. Some instances of binomials: goods and materials; liable and responsible; engage or participate, generally and specifically, etc. Apart from binomials, there exist trinomial and even multinomial expressions in legal English. Some examples: control, direct or supervise; invalid, void and unenforceable; employee, partner, agent, or principal; debts, expenses, taxes, administration costs and individual devises and bequests; files, records, documents, drawings, specifications, equipment, and similar items, etc. The main reason for the continuation of this linguistic tradition in English legal documents is that such word strings are used to convey the meaning of all-inclusiveness, that is, to cover all possible situations and eventualities. Lawyers tend to be overly cautious and they want to guard against all possible situations that may or may not arise in the future.

Remarkable is also the incidence of abstract nouns, such as authority, power, rights, duties, provision, benefits, conditions, regulations, procedure, resolution, compensation, expiration, termination, etc.

In this sense, it is also possible to “classify” the category of verbs. They are usually chosen from a rather restricted range, e.g. accept, administer, require, designate, grant, agree, recognise, present, constitute, perform, prevent, comply with, observe, exercise, enter, remain, direct, control, impair, request, conduct, receive, obtain, limit, accrue, invalidate, etc. Due to this restriction, sometimes paraphrases of the same notion appear in the same document. For instance, the phrase “confer power on sb” appears in the texts as “authorise sb, accredit sb, or grant sb the authority to, grant accreditation, or even to nominate” (though depending on the context); “have effect, be in/at effect and be in force” mean completely the same; “come into effect” and “come into force” employ the same idea as well.

Legal English is nearly void of any adjectives. If there are any adjectival items present, then the grounds are evident. Such adjectives essentially relate to the “topic” of the document which it deals with or they constitute an element of a fixed phrase or collocation, some of which make technical terms, e.g.: statutory, discretionary, general and elective (they collocate with powers and rights); informal and unsupervised (administration); real and personal (property); specific (devises, bequests, articles); (un)enforceable, (in)valid, void (provisions, articles, agreement); necessary (disbursement, costs, fees); liable and responsible (person, party, body entity); additional (powers, duties), and minor, consequential, incidental, supplementary (provisions, amendments).

The most frequent adjective in all the texts (except for the Warranty Deed) is that of “ reasonable”. It is in collocation with nouns such as grounds, fees, costs, compensation, promotional activities, and requirements. They are fixed items and all seem to be used technically in these instruments. Other adjectives are not present, particularly those that have some evaluative character, because their meaning is very often ambiguous and imprecise, and it would seem improper to use them. Legal texts must be punctual and allow for no loopholes, variability of meaning, or misinterpretation.

So, summing up the issue of vocabulary we may state that adjectives in legal English are fairly scarce (because they are often imprecise and vague), nouns tend to be abstract rather than concrete (because they frequently do not refer to physical objects), and verbs are selected from a fairly small number of lexical sets.

And one more distinct feature to be mentioned is the use of any, which sometimes appears excessive, but it has its justification. It is applied to make the whole sentences as inclusive as possible, so that, again, there is no loophole:

...nor shall any waiver or relinquishment of any right or power at any one time or times be deemed a waiver or relinquishment of that right or power for all or any other times.

Thus, for lexical difficulties, the legal translator should understand the different types of vocabulary he/she is dealing with in the text, whether they are common, specialized, archaic, abstract, or functional. Each type of these lexical items requires caution, investigation and knowledge on part of the translator. For example, with common words, the translator is entitled to distinguish the exact meaning of these words in the legal context. He/she should consult specialists, and analyze similar texts for reaching the best solution. In the case of specialized words, he/she may try to understand the lexical items conceptually rather than translating them literally, or resorting to specialist dictionaries. When translating archaic expressions, the translator should find an approximate corresponding expression in the TL or use paraphrasing. Abstract words are so sensitive and they are subject to many legal interpretations in the legal context. Thus, the legal translator should translate them as they are and never try to disambiguate them even if his translation will result in a vague text. For functional words, the translator’s best way is to use ‘paraphrase’ if there is no one-to-one correspondence between them.