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KATARZYNA JAWORSKA-BISKUP
UNIVERSITY OF SZCZECIN
English-Polish language contact in the translation
of EU law
ABSTRACT. The article addresses the issue of translating EU legislation with an emphasis
placed on the difficulties English terminology may pose for a Polish translator. The examples
collected from the Consolidated Versions of the Treaty on the European Union and the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union show that language contact in the
translation process might be a source of many terminological inconsistencies and
ambiguities. In addition, it can be observed that the Polish translations of EU documents
become more and more infused with the features of the English language, which only
supports the thesis of the rapid expansion of this language in the world.
KEYWORDS. European Union, translation, globalisation, interference, equivalence, borrowings
1. Introduction
Considering the issue of language contact it is probably nowhere more apparent
than in the EU, the organization that is entirely based on the principle of
linguistic diversity according to which the languages of all Member States shall
enjoy the equal status, the right vested in many legal instruments such as, for
instance, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969.
Pushing for a moment legal deliberations aside, one cannot escape the observation
that a multitude of language versions of primary and secondary legislation,
or to put it differently, the “encounter of languages in translation” triggers
many linguistic phenomena that can be put under the umbrella term of
language interference. Particularly, it is visible when comparing the original and
translated documents. This is also the case in the Polish and English languages
since Polish accession to the EU in 2004.
2. The notion of English-Polish language contact
It is an obvious fact that due to recent changes, such as globalization, the
fall of communism in the east European countries and the introduction of democracy
therein as well as hegemony of west culture, especially the American
and British culture, the Polish language has undergone a considerable evolution
visible in everyday communication. This phenomenon did not escape the attention
of linguists who combine more and more data of new lexical items that are
LANGUAGES IN CONTACT 2011