TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

punerii în aplicare a prezentei decizii ar trebui adoptate în conformitate cu
Decizia Consiliului 1999/468/CE din 28 iunie 1999 …” would have avoided
most of the problems that have just been mentioned.
Except for cases like the ones discussed above, the Predicates, or,
more precisely, the whole verb phrases of the sentences and the clauses in
my texts, predominantly occupy the rheme position in the EU documents
under analysis. Baker (1992: 122) notes that, in spite of its final position in
the clause, the rheme is the most important element in the structure of the
message, because, by specifying the information that the speaker wants to
convey about the theme, it actually fulfils the communicative purpose of the
utterance. Therefore, even if the thematized element enjoys local
prominence at the level of the clause, it is the element in rheme position that
is important on an overall discourse level (cf. Baker, 1992: 131).
Since the rhemes expressed by verb phrases have proved to represent
the norm in both the English and the Romanian EU texts, this will be the
only rhematic category that I will discuss here. In fact, the organization of
this type of rhemes in the documents making up my corpus presents some
interesting characteristics that I will briefly mention in what follows.
There are quite frequent situations when the rheme is meant to
specify the exact sense in which some terms and expressions are to be
understood in a certain document. Definitions of this kind are used in order
to clearly explain the meaning and to thoroughly delimit the reference of
terms and expressions that either belong to the specialized field with which
the legislative act is concerned:
e.g. ST: “‘diesel fuels’ means gas oils falling within CN code 2710 19 41 and used
for self-propelling vehicles as referred to in Directive 70/220/EEC and
Directive 88/77/EEC.”
TT: “‘motorine’ înseamnă carburanţii care se încadrează la codul NC 2710 19
41 şi sunt utilizaţi pentru vehiculele cu autopropulsie menţionaţi în Directiva
70/220/CEE şi Directiva 88/77/CEE.”
(32003L0017)
or are usually associated with a more general sense:
e.g. ST: “‘participants’ shall mean the entities which have direct
access to a national RTGS system and have an RTGS account with
the NCB concerned …”
TT: “‘participanţi’ înseamnă entităţile care au acces direct la un