The JCiCM Platform Improving the quality and efficiency of legal translation in criminal matters via corpus-based tools 1 Łucja Biel Institute of Applied Linguistics University of Warsaw

Quality of legal translation Fuzziness of the concept of translation quality Two fundamental relations of translations 1.The relation of equivalence (relation to the source text) – faithfullness, accuracy, precision, information transfer 2.The relation of textual fit (relation to nontranslated target-language texts of a comparable genre)  communicative dimension of translations, naturalness of translation Chesterman (2004) 2

Efficiency of legal translation Automation of certain choices (the cognitive level), cognitive routines established If not automated Speed of information retrieval (information mining competence plus available resources) -terminology mining: fast retrieval of terminological equivalents -phraseological environment of terms -genre formata & conventions 3

Efficiency of legal translation Quality of the information mining process Precision and calibration of searches Contextualisation of information Data provenance (metadata) Integration of resources in a single place 4

Traditional and new resources for LITs Discussion fora Googling Electronic termbases, e.g. IATE Translation memories, e.g. DGT’s TM Translation-driven corpora 5

Corpus: a body of language representative of a particular variety of language or genre which is collected and stored in electronic form (for the purpose of linguistic analysis) (McEnery et al. CASS) Monolingual genre-based corpora DIY / ad hoc corpora (Bernardini & Zanettin 2000, Beeby et al. 2009, Gallego-Hernandez 2013, Scott 2013), disposable corpora (Varantola 2000) Comparative monolingual corpora Parallel multilingual corpora Multilingually comparable corpus 6

Translation-driven corpora Monolingual comparable corpora contain: (1) a corpus of translations (2) a corpus of texts created spontaneously in the same language (nontranslations) A parallel corpus is a translation corpus in the strictest sense ─ it contains source texts aligned with their target texts; it may be bilingual or multilingual and bi-directional. Multilingually comparable corpora (cf. Hansen-Schirra and Teich, 2009: 1162) – a combination of comparable and parallel corpora due to questions raised as to the legitimacy of research into translations without any reference to underlying source texts. 7

Corpora in translation practice Advantages of working with corpora Shortcomings/ problem areas corpora provide a different type of information than traditional resources corpora enable more nuanced terminology work with contextualised information they raise translators’ awareness of SL/TL genre conventions increase the textual fit of translations by producing more natural translations which use patterns typical of TL time-consuming nature of corpus building process ‘primitive’ parallel corpus software need to train translators how to work with corpora lack of integration of corpus tools with CAT tools 8

Availability of corpus tools for LITs Despite the growing popularity of language corpora and corpus tools in various areas of linguistics and translation studies, relatively little efforts have been devoted to the development of corpus-based tools intended to assist legal translators in their work limited corpus resources, in particular for lesser used languages limited accessibility of corpus resources confidentiality of legal texts and related corpus design limitations  legicentrism 9

Use of corpus tools by translators As a result, translators are not familiar with methods of working with corpora Bowker (2004: 13) „the uptake of corpora in the world of professional translators appears to have been considerably slower” Varela-Vila (2009), Pastor & Alcina (2009: 13)  corpora are increasingly more popular Depends on a popularity of corpora among the academia in a given country Growing use of DIY/ad hoc corpora  may increase familiarity with corpus tools among translators DIY/ad hoc corpora a powerful tool but more structured, representative and integrated resourced are needed 10

More advanced translation tools JudGENTT, a web platform with documentary, textual and terminological resources for the translation of court documents, developed by the GENTTT (Textual Genres for Translation) Research Group, based at the Department of Translation and Communication at the Universitat Jaume I in Spain ( More information: Anabel Borja Albi „A genre analysis approach to the study of the translation of court documents” in Łucja Biel & Jan Engberg Research Models and Methods in Legal Translation, LANS-TTS 12(2013), TTS/article/view/235/202 11

JCiCM PLATFORM Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters (JCiCM) 12

JCiCM Platform Content: resources related to judicial cooperation in criminal matters (JCiCM) Language pair: English – Polish Corpus type: bilingually comparable & parallel corpora Objective: to create a more targeted aid which integrates resources in a form of searchable corpora. to provide contextualised dynamic information on available terminological equivalents (their frequency and collocations) to ensure open access to the platform 13

Judicial cooperation in criminal matters Introduced by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and regulated under Title V (Area of freedom, security and justice) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Combating (transnational) crime Enhancing cooperation of judicial authorities in the Member States (Eurojust, European Judicial Network) Based on the principle of mutual recognition of judgments by Member States & approximation of nationa law 14

JCiCM: corpus design A broad definition of JCiCM adopted for the purposes of corpus design (cooperation & combating of crime) To facilitate translations under Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings  translations for „suspected or accused persons who do not understand the language of the criminal proceedings” 15

Corpus design: identification of core corpus components JCiCM corpus EU component PL national component UK national component + general legal reference corpora 16

General legal reference corpora 17 TextsWords (Tokens) in million PL R-Acquis: Regulations PL L-Acquis: Directives Polish Law Corpus (PLC) EN R-Acquis: Regulations EN L-Acquis: Directives

Corpus design: EU component EU component: as a comparable and parallel aligned corpus; EN-PL bilingual documents Legislative instruments - EUR-Lex, Heading 19 Area of freedom, security and justice --> Judicial cooperation in criminal matters 746 documents of which: 121 secondary legislation 12 international agreements Case law of the Court of Justice: Curia - documents classified under the subject matter Area of freedom, security and justice, cooperation in criminal matters (50 cases) Essential documents, e.g. EAW 18

Corpus design: identification of core EU documents 19

Corpus design: identification of core EU documents 20

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Concordances of trafficking 22

Corpus design: identification of core national documents PL Criminal law: Polish legislation related to criminal law and criminal procedure, eg. Kodeks Karny, Kodeks postępowania karnego, ustawa o przeciwdziałaniu praniu pieniędzy oraz finansowaniu terroryzmu Supreme Court judgments (The Criminal Law Chamber, an annotated corpus compiled by R.Górski) 11.6 million words and comprises 11,595 decisions, such as postanowienie, uchwała, wyrok, zarządzenie, ranging from Essential documents: Article 3.2 any decision depriving a person of his liberty, any charge or indictment, any judgment) plus instructions for suspected persons and witnesses Monolingual Bilingual aligned documents wherever possible 23

Corpus design: identification of core national documents UK Criminal law: no codification – bigger corpus Judgments Court & related documents: e.g. instructions/guides for suspected persons and witnesses, judgments, bills of indictment  the scale of the corpus will depend on (1) funding and (2) involvement of translators and courts 24

Contextualisation: PL Supreme Court Judgments 25

PL criminal law: akt oskarżenia 26

PL criminal law: akt oskarżenia 27

Research objectives the analysis of the interplay between EU and national law terminology related to criminal matters in view of the prevalent recommendation to avoid functional equivalents (focus on terminology related to transnational crime); the assessment of equivalents used in EU official translations and their applicability in national contexts ('terminological fit'); The analysis of translation practice  ‘established’ equivalents (Newmark 1981: 73; Molina and Hurtado Albir 2002: 510)/recognised translation (cf. Newmark 1981: 76) Identification of key genric features of documents used in JCiCM 28

Conclusions Need to persuade funders that language corpora are worth investing public money in (applied rather than basic research) Need to prepare more user-friendly interfaces and more resources (economy of scale) Need to persuade judicial authorities to provide access to bilingual documents Need to persuade and train translators to use corpus- based tools 29

Thank you for your attention 30