TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

e.g. ST: “This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20 th day following its
publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.”
TT: “Prezentul regulament intră în vigoare în a douăzecea zi de la publicarea în
Jurnalul Oficial al Uniunii Europene.”
(32003R0492)
or to some other legislative document that bears relevance in that specific
context:
e.g. ST: “The provisions of Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989 on the
introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of
workers at work remain fully applicable …”
TT: “Dispoziţiile Directivei Consiliului 89/391/CEEdin 12 iunie 1989 privind
punerea în aplicare de măsuri pentru promovarea îmbunătăţirii securităţii şi
sănătăţii lucrătorilor la locul de muncă rămân pe deplin aplicabile …”
(32003L0088)
Thirdly, many of the Subject noun phrases present in the EU texts
under analysis denote various concepts specific to the sphere to which the
legal provisions of the document in question apply:
e.g. ST: “Classified documents shall be processed in accordance with the rules in
force on security.”
TT: “Documentele clasificate se prelucrează în conformitate cu normele în
vigoare privind siguranţa.”
(32002D0047)
As the examples offered above well illustrate, the EU texts generally
thematize concepts of central importance for the propositional content that
these documents are meant to convey. In other words, these important
concepts stand for what the sentences making up the texts “are about”,
creating, at the same time, the framework within which what is said should
be understood. This characteristic of the EU documents may be explained
by the requirement for clarity that legal texts in general must meet.
However, the texts in my corpus also present cases when the theme
position is occupied by elements other than the grammatical subject. Thus,
there are quite frequent examples of clauses which place an Adverbial
Phrase in initial position. The EU documents do not seem to show any
preference for the thematization of one particular kind of Adverbial, since