Natalja Nikolaeva
Higher education — Specialist’s degree in philology and foreign languages from Ho Chi Minh Irkutsk State Institute of Foreign Languages (qualification: English and German teacher). Scientific degree — Ph.D. in Philology (German Philology, Language Theory) from Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Academic honors — Associate Professor in the specialty ‘Methodology and technology of tertiary education’. Affiliation — Bauman Moscow State Technical University, English Language Department, Associate Professor. She has 15 study books on ESP and EAP, more than 100 scientific publications on linguistic, educational, and methodical issues. Research interests: cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, gender studies, English for academic and specific purposes, as well as methodology, pedagogy, and psychology of language education in higher education environment.
Title: Interpreting Legal English phraseological units: Educational and cognitive potential of ESP Internet resources
Legal English with its own specific syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features represents both cognitive and translation complexities for Russian university students due to its cultural specificity and idiosyncrasy. In this regard, it is extremely important for the students to have an access to the legal interpretive resources with reliable and up-to-date information. There are a number of online resources that ensure the availability of linguistic, namely, legal phraseological information to the students. This report describes and compares the most representative bilingual and multilingual Internet resources in English, which contain legal phraseological units (TERMIUM Plus, JURITERM, InterActive Terminology for Europe (IATE), YuriDiCo, MuLex). The aim is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of these resources in terms of their legal interpretation, translation, and educational potential. We consider both definitions and cognitive value of legal phraseological units, as well as their translation equivalents, variety and quality of examples. Phraseological information, such as contexts of phraseological units, their explanations, links to sources, hyperlinks, reliability codes, synonyms, antonyms, similar terms, different forms, etc., also falls into our research interests. The students of BMSTU are deeply involved in the research. The results demonstrate high representativeness, accessibility, and significance of legal digital resources for teaching law students ESP. A comparative analysis of the Internet resources reveals some controversial issues. They are as follows. There exists different representation of nominative and verbal phraseological units with an insufficient number of the latter ones despite their frequent usage in legal documents. Different ways of accessing both phraseological units and phraseological information complicate the search. Definitions and contexts of phraseological units are not given everywhere, which do not contribute to their interpretation, understanding, and memorizing. References to the translation as evidence of its reliability is not always given. The absence of direct correspondence between phraseological units in the same or different languages complicates the evaluation / interpretation of their equivalents. User-friendly interface without sophisticated metalanguage is of utmost importance. Otherwise, it may reduce the students’ motivation to learning legal English. In general, the analyzed digital resources are accessible, relevant, and authentic material that can be effectively used for learning legal English.
Summary
This report describes some Internet resources in English which contain legal phraseological units. It aims at evaluating these resources’ (dis)advantages in terms of their legal interpretation, translation, and educational potential. We consider definitions, cognitive value of legal phraseological units, as well as their translation equivalents, variety and quality of examples.
Higher education — Specialist’s degree in philology and foreign languages from Ho Chi Minh Irkutsk State Institute of Foreign Languages (qualification: English and German teacher). Scientific degree — Ph.D. in Philology (German Philology, Language Theory) from Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Academic honors — Associate Professor in the specialty ‘Methodology and technology of tertiary education’. Affiliation — Bauman Moscow State Technical University, English Language Department, Associate Professor. She has 15 study books on ESP and EAP, more than 100 scientific publications on linguistic, educational, and methodical issues. Research interests: cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, gender studies, English for academic and specific purposes, as well as methodology, pedagogy, and psychology of language education in higher education environment.
Title: Interpreting Legal English phraseological units: Educational and cognitive potential of ESP Internet resources
Legal English with its own specific syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features represents both cognitive and translation complexities for Russian university students due to its cultural specificity and idiosyncrasy. In this regard, it is extremely important for the students to have an access to the legal interpretive resources with reliable and up-to-date information. There are a number of online resources that ensure the availability of linguistic, namely, legal phraseological information to the students. This report describes and compares the most representative bilingual and multilingual Internet resources in English, which contain legal phraseological units (TERMIUM Plus, JURITERM, InterActive Terminology for Europe (IATE), YuriDiCo, MuLex). The aim is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of these resources in terms of their legal interpretation, translation, and educational potential. We consider both definitions and cognitive value of legal phraseological units, as well as their translation equivalents, variety and quality of examples. Phraseological information, such as contexts of phraseological units, their explanations, links to sources, hyperlinks, reliability codes, synonyms, antonyms, similar terms, different forms, etc., also falls into our research interests. The students of BMSTU are deeply involved in the research. The results demonstrate high representativeness, accessibility, and significance of legal digital resources for teaching law students ESP. A comparative analysis of the Internet resources reveals some controversial issues. They are as follows. There exists different representation of nominative and verbal phraseological units with an insufficient number of the latter ones despite their frequent usage in legal documents. Different ways of accessing both phraseological units and phraseological information complicate the search. Definitions and contexts of phraseological units are not given everywhere, which do not contribute to their interpretation, understanding, and memorizing. References to the translation as evidence of its reliability is not always given. The absence of direct correspondence between phraseological units in the same or different languages complicates the evaluation / interpretation of their equivalents. User-friendly interface without sophisticated metalanguage is of utmost importance. Otherwise, it may reduce the students’ motivation to learning legal English. In general, the analyzed digital resources are accessible, relevant, and authentic material that can be effectively used for learning legal English.
Summary
This report describes some Internet resources in English which contain legal phraseological units. It aims at evaluating these resources’ (dis)advantages in terms of their legal interpretation, translation, and educational potential. We consider definitions, cognitive value of legal phraseological units, as well as their translation equivalents, variety and quality of examples.