Translating official documents from French to English in Uganda
A sociolinguistic and pragmatic approach
Although underexplored in Africa, the translation of official documents presents a revelatory context for
examining translation practice and theory. Through a sociolinguistic and pragmatic lens, this study explores how translating
official documents by focusing on linguistic equivalences without taking into account national institutional systems can be
misleading. The argument is made that sociolinguistic variables and Grice’s pragmatic maxims are essential in enhancing
translation effectiveness. A sample of 151 pairs of source and target documents dating from 2011–2017 was purposively selected.
This corpus from nineteen Francophone countries covers three broad categories: Education, Legal, and General Administrative
Correspondence. Nineteen translators and fourteen end-users were also interviewed regarding the translation effectiveness of
corpus examples. Data is analyzed using sociolinguistic and pragmatic criteria. Finally, the analysis is positioned within the
broader scholarship on translation studies to demonstrate how this approach expands our knowledge regarding effective
translation.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Aims of the study and research questions
- 3.Methodology
- 4.Results
- 4.1Introduction/Title
- 4.1.1Translation of government ministry names, logos, and postal addresses
- 4.1.1.1Translation of administrative certificate names
- 4.2Main body/statement
- 4.2.1Translation of administrative divisions and officers
- 4.2.1.1Translation of abbreviations
- 4.3Pragmatic considerations
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
-
References