Education paper by Sárosi-Mardirosz, Krisztina-Mária
Teaching Legal English for Hungarian Students Studying at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Teaching legal English for students studying at Sapientia University to become translators is a permanent challenge for both the teacher and the student. In our case, the situation is even more complicated because our students must learn not only Hungarian and English legal terminology but they have to acquire knowledge in the domain of Romanian legal terminology, too. This is the consequence of the fact that in Romania according to the legislation in force the mother tongue of all the citizens – regardless of their nationality – is considered to be Romanian. Besides this fact – though the Act on Public Administration permits to use the mother tongue in official contexts – legal procedures take place mainly in Romanian. That is why it is necessary to teach our students first of all Romanian legal concepts and only based on this may we teach them legal English. Thus this teaching process becomes a permanent search for equivalence among Hungarian, English and Romanian legal terms. Our paper deals with the methodology of teaching legal English for students whose mother tongue is Hungarian but for whom it is compulsory the know legal Romanian, too. We will present the main difficulties that are due to the differences of the three concerned legal systems and the cultural differences related to the applying of these legal systems. These differences are mirrored in the three legal languages used by specialists and must be recognized by future translators to make them able to communicate efficiently in their work languages.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Krisztina-Mária Sárosi-Márdirosz (PhD) is currently an assistant professor at the Sapientia University of
Marosvásárhely, at the Department of Humanities. She completed her university degree in Hungarian
language and literature and English language and literature at Babeș‒Bolyai University in 2002. She
continued her studies at the same university and received her master’s degree in Hungarian linguistics in
2004. In 2009 she defended her PhD thesis with the title Problems of Translation in the case of the
Language of Official Documents (regarding Romanian-Hungarian Relations) Her main field of research is
translation studies focusing on the official translations and on the problems occurring in the domain of legal
translation. She presented the results of her research in numerous national and international conferences.