Challenges of legal language: the translation of German compounds into Portuguese

• Autor(a) principal: Alegre, Teresa
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Herget, Katrin
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34624/rual.v0i5.2365

In the German language, compound words represent a very common phenomenon of lexical compression, which is why they have been considered a challenge for every learner of German. The possibility of condensing complex and specific information by the help of compound nouns, is especially evident in specialised language. In the course of an earlier study on medical language, this article aims at studying the translation challenge of compound nouns in legal texts from German into European Portuguese. The focus will lie on the text genre letter of request. Compound nouns match perfectly with the abstract characteristics of legal language texts. The aim of this analysis is to show specific aspects of the translation of compound nouns from German into Portuguese. Whereas in German, the formation of compounds follows well-defined structures, the translator into Portuguese is confronted with a variety of different word formations, which must correspond to Portuguese morphosyntactic rules. This analysis aims at bridging the gap concerning compound words in legal language within the above mentioned language pair.