TACATrad (Certified Authentic Anonymised Texts for Translation): activity of the sworn translator, trilingual terminology research and mapping of international procedures – TACATrad

This transdisciplinary project is the result of a collaboration between researchers in Foreign languages, Linguistics and Law, as well as sworn translators in various European countries. Supported by the CeRLA lab (Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics) of Université Lumière Lyon 2, it is developing a scientific collaboration with the CEL lab (Centre for Linguistics Studies) of Université Lyon 3 Jean Moulin, the Antoine Favre Centre for Research in Law of Université Savoie Mont Blanc and the LIDILEM lab (Laboratory of Linguistics and Didactics of Foreign and Native Languages) of Université Grenoble Alpes.
By approaching legal translation from the angle of the sworn translator's professional activity in a specific context (primarily in France, while initiating a comparative reflection) and the authentic texts that the translator translates, we will be able to better understand three sub-types of legal translation that share certain linguistic, terminological and cultural traits, namely administrative, judiciary and notarial translation. In these three cases, a national legal framework applies, unlike institutional translation, which is developing in parallel with a constantly evolving process of legal-cum-linguistic standardisation and which accounts for most of the scientific work in legal translation while representing a limited share of translation flows.
The project aims to test 2 hypotheses from legal traductology (A) and from the study of specialised languages (B) using corpus linguistics:
A- The legal translator's aim is to create a third way in translating their legal terminological units, and not to create a text that would seek to be an equivalent in the legal system corresponding to the skopos (i.e. the purpose and destination of the translation);
B- The work of sworn translators goes beyond legal translation: the texts they translate are often hybrid, or even devoid of a legal lexicon. This awareness would make it possible to encourage approaches that do not artificially compartmentalise the different fields of specialised translation.
The aim of the TACATrad project is:
- to establish a comparable trilingual corpus of authentic texts used to produce certified translations, the TACATs;
- to establish a database presenting a taxonomy of TACATs in the form of a tree structure and three glossaries on the type of TACAT, on the type of administrative procedure associated with the TACAT and on the activity of the sworn translator in France;
- to offer a trilingual constrastive analysis of legal terminology units and to provide equivalents from a translational point of view;
- to promote knowledge of the activities of expert translators-interpreters within the scientific community by means of the TACATrad corpus, which brings together documents used to carry out administrative procedures abroad, and a sociolinguistic survey of sworn translators and legal professionals;
- to establish and analyse the Digital Discourse corpus of professional writings by/about sworn translators;
- to produce a website for the general public containing statistics in the form of infographics, the three glossaries and a map of international procedures in order to raise awareness of the role of sworn translators in dealing with the courts, the authorities and private individuals, and of the need for certified translations depending on bilateral relations.
The TACATrad project promotes research in Jurilinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Translation Studies, Language for Specific Purposes, and Terminology, both in short diachrony and diatopy, as well as in Law.