This study deals with the comparative analysis of the linguistic features that
certain sample marriage-related documents in Spanish and English present,
including the analysis of linguistic constructions and terminology, so as to test
the contextual, cultural and linguistic differences that translating a document
in a legal ...»»»»
This study deals with the comparative analysis of the linguistic features that
certain sample marriage-related documents in Spanish and English present,
including the analysis of linguistic constructions and terminology, so as to test
the contextual, cultural and linguistic differences that translating a document
in a legal language means, in contrast with the translation of a document in
a standard language. In addition, some notions of comparative law,
describing the institution of marriage in the corresponding legal systems, Civil
Law and Common Law, were introduced, so as to support the differences
related to the linguistic analysis. The methodology followed was a deep
examination of the language features in the documents, regarding aspects as
the structure, the lexicon, uncommon or fixed structures and the legal
terminology. The results of the analysis showed many differences in the type
of constructions that characterise each legal language, as well as a non correspondence among the terminology used in the two languages and
different strategies to accomplish a formal discourse. The conclusions reached
are related to the necessity of undergoing both a linguistic and a comparative
law analysis in order to produce an adequate translation of a legal document.^^^^
