LINGUISTIC AND STRUCTURAL PECULIARITIES OF THE CONTRACT IN THE RUSSIAN, AMERICAN AND BRITISH LEGAL SYSTEMS: COMPARATIVE TRANSLATION ASPECT

The paper focuses on the linguistic and structural peculiarities of the contract in the Russian, American and British legal systems and the problems faced by translators when translating contracts from Russian into English. The study is based on 11 contracts of purchase (the original language is Russian) and their translations. Moreover 20 contracts in English, the parties of which are British or American organizations, were analyzed for comparison purposes and to determine the characteristics of their language and structure. The relevance of this study is related to the high demand for translations of this kind, while the translation practice in this sphere can vary significantly depending on the enterprise. It seems that the translation of contracts in the English-Russian language pair should be based on knowledge of the structural and linguistic features of contracts in Russian, American and British legal systems, as these features have a direct impact on the translation process. The objective of this study is to identify the basic linguistic and structural peculiarities of the contracts of purchase in order to justify the choice of various translation solutions in the case of the most common translation difficulties. In the course of the study it was revealed that the contracts are characterized by certain orthographic and punctuation features, some of which are related to the certain writing of numbers and amounts and they are different for contracts in English and Russian, the common features are the rules for registering lists and using capital letters for the names of parties to the contract. The contracts of three legal systems are characterized by the following lexical peculiarities: the use of set expressions, for example: “on behalf of,” the use of linguistic borrowings, for example, “status quo,” “de facto,” “de jure,” in addition, the use of various abbreviations and acronyms are often found in contracts. However, both Russian-language and English-language contracts also have outstanding lexical peculiarities. For example, only English contracts are characterized by the use of double synonyms (“claims and differences”) or the use of polysemantic units, and only a Russian contract can be characterized by the use of bureaucratic cliches and the presence of a limited lexical compatibility of words. Contracts have certain grammatical features; these features in English and Russian have similarities and differences. For example, the contracts of three legal systems are characterized by the use of complex sentences, and the use of passive voice, but the use of performatives and structures with derivative prepositions is typical only for Russian contracts, while contracts in English can be characterized by the use of complex adverbs and different transfer forms of obligation.