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<p>Legal translation, as a type of specialist translation with high technicality and a multiplicity of subfields, reflects a demanding and critical aspect of translation studies (Afzaal M, Du X in Asia Pacific Trans Intercult Stud 10(1):3–19, 2023; Alcaraz Varó E, Brian H in Legal translation explained. St. Jerome Pub, Manchester, 2002). It remains a challenge for legal practitioners and forensic linguists to formulate a unified norm for legal translation owing to the complexity and technicality of the genre itself. The nature of such norm should be interdisciplinary including legal theories, linguistics and translation norms. It could not only guide the translators in relieving the tension between linguistic indeterminacy and legal certainty, but also provide a benchmark for analysing and assessing translated legal texts (Alexander RJ in ELT J 38(2):127–134, 1984). Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine how native academic writing, featured with precision, syntactic rigor and formal coherence, can serve as benchmark for assessing the legal translation under the framework of syntactic complexity. It compares Saudi legal translation with native academic writing (BAWE), specifically on extent to which translated legal texts vary from academic proses in terms of syntactic complexity measures. Furthermore, it discusses the metrics that contributes to such variation employing the nested modelling approaches including Conditional Inference Tree, Random Forest and Gradient Boosting. We employed 14 metrics ranging from the length of the production unit, coordinative and subordinative structures. The results indicated that 13 of the 14 features under analysis had substantial variance, with Length of Product Unit subconstruct showing the highest variation. Additionally, the features that contrast within the syntactic complexity also indicate that Saudi translated texts tend to lack explicitness. Based on the application of Ctree-based non-parametric test, MLC (Mean Length of Clause) appears to be a distinguishably inferential feature. The study shows that syntactic complexity indices of native academic writing serve a tentative benchmark for the probing of translated Saudi laws. It also provides an account of how syntactic norms in languages like Arabic and English shift to legal translation by offering pertinent insights into the phenomenon of syntactic complexity as it transpires in legal translation.</p>

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Can Quality Academic Writing Serve as a Benchmark for Arabic-English Legal Translation? A Case Study on Saudi Civil Law Based on Nested Modelling Approaches

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年8月21日

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  • Ali Asiri,
  • Shanshan Xiao

摘要

Legal translation, as a type of specialist translation with high technicality and a multiplicity of subfields, reflects a demanding and critical aspect of translation studies (Afzaal M, Du X in Asia Pacific Trans Intercult Stud 10(1):3–19, 2023; Alcaraz Varó E, Brian H in Legal translation explained. St. Jerome Pub, Manchester, 2002). It remains a challenge for legal practitioners and forensic linguists to formulate a unified norm for legal translation owing to the complexity and technicality of the genre itself. The nature of such norm should be interdisciplinary including legal theories, linguistics and translation norms. It could not only guide the translators in relieving the tension between linguistic indeterminacy and legal certainty, but also provide a benchmark for analysing and assessing translated legal texts (Alexander RJ in ELT J 38(2):127–134, 1984). Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine how native academic writing, featured with precision, syntactic rigor and formal coherence, can serve as benchmark for assessing the legal translation under the framework of syntactic complexity. It compares Saudi legal translation with native academic writing (BAWE), specifically on extent to which translated legal texts vary from academic proses in terms of syntactic complexity measures. Furthermore, it discusses the metrics that contributes to such variation employing the nested modelling approaches including Conditional Inference Tree, Random Forest and Gradient Boosting. We employed 14 metrics ranging from the length of the production unit, coordinative and subordinative structures. The results indicated that 13 of the 14 features under analysis had substantial variance, with Length of Product Unit subconstruct showing the highest variation. Additionally, the features that contrast within the syntactic complexity also indicate that Saudi translated texts tend to lack explicitness. Based on the application of Ctree-based non-parametric test, MLC (Mean Length of Clause) appears to be a distinguishably inferential feature. The study shows that syntactic complexity indices of native academic writing serve a tentative benchmark for the probing of translated Saudi laws. It also provides an account of how syntactic norms in languages like Arabic and English shift to legal translation by offering pertinent insights into the phenomenon of syntactic complexity as it transpires in legal translation.