Exploring Cross-Cultural Legal Terminology: A Corpus-Based Study of English Translation in Saudi Laws

Legal translation is deemed an arduous task, drawing on various lexical and structural choices (Chroma, 2004). Failure to adopt suitable translation strategies and procedures to overcome the challenges of translating legal terminology would undeniably affect the target readers’ ability to understand their translations. Therefore, this mixed-methods corpus-based study examined the English translation of 44 Arabic culture-specific legal terms (CSLTs) used in six Saudi laws (SLs) and focused on identifying the translation strategies and procedures. The CSLTs included in this study were categorized into religious terms, names of institutions, titles of laws, and miscellaneous terms. To analyze the CSLTs’ translation, a parallel corpus including the six SLs and their translations was created using Phrase TMS. To identify the strategies and procedures, Venuti’s (1995) and Mailhac’s (1996) models were utilized. The results revealed that both of Venuti’s strategies were followed, and domestication was adopted more than foreignization. In addition, seven of Mailhac’s procedures were applied, where the procedure most employed is definition, while compensation is the least used.