ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN TRANSLATING LEGAL TEXTS FROM ENGLISH TO THE IGBO LANGUAGE

Abstract

This study engages on the translation of Procedure for commencing cases in customary courts in Enugu State, Nigeria, with a  view to identifying the translation problems encountered, and the possible solutions to the problems. The source text (ST) is a legal document written in the English language and it was produced by Women Information Network (WINET) in order to enlighten the Enugu State citizenry, who are all Igbo, on the way to seek redress through the customary court. Unfortunately, a greater percentage of Enugu State citizenry who will benefit from the document do not understand the technical language used in preparing the legal document. This study, therefore, sets out to translate the legal text into the Igbo language to find out the problems one encounters in legal translation, present the most suitable translation theories and/or principles one can adopt in order to solve the translation problems encountered. The researcher adopts the theories of Toury’s descriptive translation studies and Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation principles and strategies in the translation of the legal text. The researcher adopts the emergent research design and content analysis approach in order to isolate and discusses the observed translation problems, and discovers that the aforementioned frameworks are suitable for legal translation. It also observes that basically, the problems of translating legal text are hinged on lack of lucidity of information provided in legal texts, caused by the legal terminologies used by the jury in preparing legal documents. The present study recommends that works in the legal field be made available to the citizenry in their local languages through translation and/or in simple English to enhance lucidity and maximum use of such legal documents.

1. Background to the study

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

In this era of globalization, translation plays a key role in information exchange or transfer between or among languages. Translators are, therefore, faced with the challenge and demand for constant and effective communication and information transfer involving different languages and cultures. The transfer of information could be oral, written or signed. Translation is one of the written ways through which information is transferred from one language or culture to another; hence, translation is important in information dissemination because it brings about cross fertilization of ideas and culture.

Translation is a very old language activity and a very young academic activity which came into limelight in the 70s. The world’s first trace of translation, according to Nida (1964), dates back to 3,000 BC during the old Egyptian dynasties and the exact location was the first Cataract Elephantine, where an inscription in two languages was discovered. Many scholars have been involved in translation through which ideas and other people’s traditions have been transmitted to different societies. For instance, Nida (1964) States that when the Moorish supremacy collapsed in Spain, the Toledo school of translators translated Arabic versions of Greek scientific and philosophical classics, and in 1552, Luther lays the foundation of modern German by his translation of the Bible, while the King James version had some seminal influence on the English language and literature. The above views presented by Nida (1964) show the importance of translation in information transfer from one culture to another.

Furthermore, the 20th century has been called the age of translation or Elizabethan age. According to Nida (1964), the ambition of the translators of Elizabethan age was to discover new worlds of thought and beauty. They sailed the wide ocean of knowledge to bring back to their English shore some eloquent strangers whom their industry had taught to speak with their English tongue. Their translation gave to England almost the whole wisdom of the ancient, provided important lessons for rulers and Statesman, plots for dramatists and entertainment for the letters.

From the foregoing, it is seen that translation as a craft and art is an age-long practice through which people have domesticated others literature. Translation is an academic field which no single discipline or research field will claims ownership. Typically, translation has been used to transfer written source language text (SLT) to its written target language texts (TLT). In general, the purpose of translation is to reproduce in the receptor language various kinds of texts such as religious, literary, legal, scientific, and philosophical texts, thus, making them available to the wider readers.

As  Robinson (2007)  and  Schaffner (2007)  observe, translation literally in  its

etymological sense is “bringing across” from one language or dialect to another language or dialect. On the premise of the information above, it is noticed that there is always a movement from one position to another once translation is involved. The language of information with which the source text (ST) is written is known as the source language (SL) while the language with which the target text (TT) is written is known as the target language (TL) that is, the receiving language with which the translation is done. Bassnett

(2008:11) observes, “translation involves the rendering of a source language (SL) text to the target language (TL) to ensure that:

1.  The surface meaning of the two will be approximately similar and

2.  The structures of the SL will be preserved as closely as possible but not so closely that the TL will be distorted.”

In translation, therefore, the translator understands perfectly well the content and the intention of the author whom he/she is translating. The principal ways to achieve this is reading all the sentences or the text properly, and have a firm grasp of the ST in order to  translate  properly,  since  translation  hinges  on  clarity  of  meaning  and  meaning retention. No wonder Hatim and Mason (1990) suggest that translation is a process involving the negotiation of meaning between producers and receivers of the text. Also, Nida  (1964),  cited  in  Jiraphatralikhit, Kaewjan,  Klinpoon,  and  Visitwanit  (2005:7), believes that translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and second in terms of style.

In an era where the interdependence and interactions among disciplines are the rule, translation acquires an increasingly important role for proper cross fertilization of ideas. Translators translate so that those who are not able to understand a text written in a language different from their own may have access to it. This is true for all kinds of texts and documents, including legal documents. The peculiarity of legal texts rests in their nature and, most of all, in the discipline they are born from. Law is an inflexible and intransigent social science, characterized by its focus on precision and univocity. Setting, therefore, limits the boundaries within which the translator can move to deliver a new text. This search for accuracy and univocity collides with the nature of legal language, which is tendentially ambiguous and indeterminate. Law itself, paradoxically, looks for certainty by being uncertain, trying to provide hypothetical cases which can suit more than one concrete situation, even though this is true in different measure according to the kind of law system one is dealing with.

Generally, translators adopt various strategies in translation depending on the type of text or document they are translating and the type of problem encountered in the course of the translation. Sometimes it is enough to utilize equivalent terms that are used comparatively in the target and source languages, or, alternatively, the translator may localize some elements in order to make them understandable. To solve the problem of which strategies are dominant and the best strategies to be adopted in translation, the translation of a legal text – Procedures for commencing cases in customary courts in Enugu State, Nigeria is carried out in this work, pointing out issues and challenges involved in translating the document.

1.1 About Procedure for commencing cases in customary courts in Enugu State, Nigeria

Procedure for commencing cases in customary courts in Enugu State, Nigeria was designed by the women information network WINET in May 2013. It has versions (series) but  this  research work  focuses on  information Series 3,  which is  aimed at determining the level of usage of the customary courts by the people of Enugu State, Nigeria. It is written in the English language. In Enugu State, there are one hundred and

forty-two (142) customary courts established by customary court law CAP 32, Law of Enugu State, 2004 as amended in 2011 and customary courts rule in 2011. The customary courts in Enugu State serve all the communities in the seventeen (17) Local Government Areas of the State, though one of the main challenges for the communities is that some citizens who have cases, whose rights are violated or those disinherited do not utilize the customary court as a place to seek redress because they are not aware and familiar with the workings of the customary court system and also not mobilized to appreciate and adequately utilize the customary courts. The communities this information is meant for are Ogui Nike, Ozalla, Maryland, Nike-Uno and Obioma.

WINET carried out a survey on the utilization of customary court in the five (5) communities in Enugu State from July to December 2012. They made some findings that many people are not aware of the customary courts in their communities and only a handful of them take their cases to the customary courts but many still take cases to the traditional rulers or institutions such as the kindred. In order to enlighten the Enugu State populace on the need to utilize the customary court system, the programme entitled “Raising awareness for the utilization of customary courts in five communities in Enugu State and justice for all’’ was designed to help the communities. Based on the vision of WINET, having a version of this document in the language of the people (Igbo), will go a long way in achieving its main objective.

1.2 Statement of the problem

As pointed out earlier, Procedure for commencing cases in customary courts in Enugu State, Nigeria was designed by WINET to enable Enugu State citizens know their rights, know how customary courts work and know how to seek redress. This is so because  many  citizens  are  unaware  or  ignorant  of  how  customary courts  work.  In addition, the document in question is in the English language while the greater percentage of the population that the document is meant for speak and understand only Igbo. The problem of this study, therefore, hinges on the issues that come up in legal translation and the challenges one faces in rendering such a text from English to Igbo so that the content of the legal document will be adequately utilized by Enugu State citizens. Again, the

inappropriate translation of technical terms and expressions, especially where the direct equivalence is difficult to find in the target language (TL), leaves nothing to be desired in the translation of legal texts and makes the transfer of information from English to Igbo difficult. This difficulty hinders mutual intelligibility and effective communication. The above constitute the problem of this study.

1.3 Purpose of the study

The major aim of this study is to isolate and discuss the translation problems observed in translating Procedure for commencing cases in customary courts in Enugu State Nigeria, which is in English into the Igbo language.

Specifically, the objectives of the study are to:

1.  discuss the problems encountered in the translation of the legal text from English to Igbo

2.  practically  show  how  the  most  suitable  translation  theories  and/or  principles identified in the study are used in solving the translation problems encountered

3.  re-echo the need to have legal documents meant for a group of people to be in their local language and/or simple English.

1.4 Research questions

In order to achieve the above set objectives, answers will be provided for the underlisted questions.

1.  What are the problems one encounters in the translation of a legal text from

English to Igbo?

2.  How are the most suitable translation theories and/or principles identified, used in solving the translation problems encountered?

3.  What are the benefits of having legal documents translated in local languages and/or simple English?

1.5 Scope of the study

There are a good number of legal texts or documents written in English that are meant for Igbo people. This study cannot handle all of them. So, the study is restricted to the translation of only Procedure for commencing cases in customary courts in Enugu

State, Nigeria, and the translation problems encountered in the course of translating the document from English to Igbo. The emphasis is on fishing out the technical terms and expressions that make up the legal document and how to domesticate them in the TL (Igbo) in order to communicate the appropriate meanings to the people the document is meant for, for effective communication and utilization of the document.

1.6 Limitations of the study

In the course of this research work, the researcher was constrained in various ways. First, the issue of getting the appropriate legal document for this study was a serious problem because there are many legal texts and documents but getting a legal document that has a direct bearing on the local Igbo populace was not easy. But with the help of a research assistant, who is a legal practitioner, the document was fished out. Second, the unwillingness of the respondents (court clerks) to provide answers to the research questions was a limitation. They wanted their palms to be greased before parting with any information and as a result, the researcher spent some money in this regard. Third, the researcher is not a legal professional and he is not so conversant with legal terminologies of the ST. So, the researcher consulted some legal practitioners that are linguists in order to overcome this problem. Finally, there is paucity of materials in translated legal  documents from  English  to  Igbo.  Apart  from  Okeke  (2015)  it  was difficult getting any translated legal documents or texts in Igbo. Also, the absence of an Igbo dictionary of legal terms was a constraint. But by consulting the English legal dictionaries and consulting experts (lawyers and court clerks) who understand and speak Igbo, the challenges were surmounted. These challenges did not in any way affect the authenticity of the research findings because the researcher made use of the available materials and appropriate principles of translation to translate the legal document of the study.

1.7 Significance of the study

The significance of translation in our daily life is extensively multidimensional. Generally, not only does translation pave the way for global interaction, it allows nations to forge interactive relationships when it comes to making advancements in technology,

politics, education, health etc.  Today, international diplomacy is the most important aspect of  a  nation’s external affairs. Be  it  a  global summit or  new economic deal, diplomats and world leaders always present their ideas and thoughts in a language they are comfortable in. It is very important that these ideas are translated in an expressive, non-condoning, and accurate manner, barring which it can lead to significant problems in the diplomatic relations of two or more nations.

For accurate transfer of legal information, unless transferred and translated properly, the jury would be nothing more than gibberish when received by lay people. Whether it is information coming from customary, magistrate or high courts etc, translation serves as an effective tool without which information will remain ineffective and full of confusion. Specifically, quality language translation aims to bridge the communication gap by helping legal agencies reach a multivariate global audience by talking in a  language their clients can understand and discuss in.  In  the growth of international law, translation is exceptionally important for law firms and companies, which operate in multiple countries and often need to share and receive information from different global offices and branches across the world. In such cases, there is need for the shared information to be translated into a locally preferred language so that everyone involved is on the same page. The translation of this document is also useful when ministries  or  government  agencies  need  to  tie  up  with  other  ministries/agencies in sensitizing the public or in making governmental proposals. In addition, cultural interchange like the method of governance, rights of individual, and various other legal information  transcend  global  boundaries  because  of  the  way  they  are  effectively translated to reflect local languages and sentiments. Again, translated legal documents today generate a lot of revenue for the translator and the jury and also make clients feel at home in discussing legal matters.

So, this research will provide more insights on the translation of legal texts and documents from English to  Igbo languages. This will help to  actualize the goal of WINET. Furthermore, the study will provide the most suitable translation theories and/or principles for translating legal documents, and will also show the need to have a legal

document meant for group of people to be translated in their local or in simple English in order to properly utilize the content of the legal document. Also, in the academic setting, this work will add to the existing literature in translation studies, specifically, technical translation.

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