Translation methods applied to translate Polish types and names of administrative law authority bodies into English – a case study

The paper aims to discuss Polish terms that name authority bodies under the administrative law and their English equivalents. The Polish terms under analysis appear in the first Division of the Polish Code of Administrative Procedure of 14 June 1960 and the English equivalents of each Polish term researched have been suggested in the Polish Code of Administrative Procedure translation into English. The research problem is to determine the translation methods applied and to verify whether translation methods used in the Polish-English translation of the above terms which have been determined as culture-specific items appear among translation methods applied when translating culture-specific elements suggested by Hejwowski. Furthermore, the study seeks to verify whether the mentioned translation methods appear among the translation methods discussed by Weston which are recommended to be applied while translating legal terms. The theoretical part of the paper includes a presentation of the definitions of a legal term , culture-specific item and the classification of translation methods by Hejwowski and Weston. The research stages include the comparison of definitions of source elements and definitions of their equivalents, as long as they appear in monolingual English law dictionaries.


Introduction
The translation of culture-specific items that include legal terms has always been a challenge for translators.Translators, as a general rule, do not have knowledge on details of a specific legal system, particularly a given branch of law.In online and published sources one may compare various potential equivalents (for source terms) in order to choose the __ 186 __ most accurate equivalent.Texts of sources of law of a given legal system reflect institutions and rules that are typical for a given culture and that is why legal terms and the concepts they name are culture-specific (terms) (Peruzzo, 2014: 55).It should be emphasized that the translation of terms characteristic for a legal system (called system-bound terms by Šarčević) from Polish into English is particularly challenging as the Polish legal system constitutes one of the European civil law systems, whereas the British legal system belongs to common law systems.As Šarčević states, the legal terminology characteristic of different legal systems is to a large extent conceptually incongruent (Šarčević, 1997: 278).
In this paper, the terms used to name the legal institutions of the legal systems of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are called British legal system terms as England and Wales have one common legal system, and Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal systems.
The research project encompasses the analysis of 60 Polish administrative law terms and their English equivalents.Twelve of the Polish terms discussed in the paper name all types of authority bodies provided for in the first Division of the Code of Administrative Procedure and serve as the first research sample to preliminarily verify the thesis formulated in the paper.

Methodology
The Polish administrative law terms under analysis are assumed to be culture-specific items according to Persson "concepts that are specific to a specific culture.These concepts can refer to domains such as flora, fauna, food, clothes, housing, work, leisure, politics, law, and religion, among others" (Persson, 2015: 3).The source elements discussed constitute elements "strongly connected with a specific culture; appear in literary texts, movies, TV series or cartoons" which most often are "proper names (except from those well-known in target cultures), terms connected with the political system, health service, law, habits and traditions" (Hejwowski, 2005: 355).Furthermore, they are terms in accordance with the definition of a term by Sager: "The items which are characterised by special reference within a discipline are the terms of that discipline […]" (Sager, 1990: 19).Finally the elements under research constitute legal terms according to the division of terms by Morawski (1980: 187) who has defined them as terms occurring in teksty prawne.The term teksty prawne is interpreted in the research as normative texts according to Gizbert-Studnicki (1986: 98).The Polish terms under analysis name types of administrative authority bodies that appear in the Polish Code of Administrative Procedure of 14 June 1960 (consolidated text Journal of Laws of 2017 item 1257).The English equivalents have been excerpted from the Polish Code translation into English: The Code of Administrative Procedure (Kodeks postępowania administracyjnego) translated by Bińkowska, Chełchowski, Gumola, Kopik, Walawender (Bińkowska et al., 2017) as it is the most up to date translation into English.
The stages of the research include: 1) citing a definition of a Polish source term (that appears in an administrative procedure text), 2) presenting the English equivalent of __ 187 __ a given Polish term and comparing their definitions (as long as they appear in English law dictionaries: Woodley, 2013;Greenberg, 2015;Law, 2018), with the definition of a given Polish term under analysis, 3) checking whether or not an English equivalent appears in the sources of British law, namely the legislation.gov.ukdatabase encompassing most types of legislation, and the general English language (corpora of sketchengine.euthat contains five hundred ready-to-use corpora in over ninety languages, each having a size of up to thirty billion words), and finally 4) identifying the translation method that has been applied when forming a given English equivalent.The translation method is defined according to Hejwowski as: "a given type of action undertaken during the translation process, as well as the given translation solution, the implementation of which may be evaluated directly in the target text" (Hejwowski, 2004: 76).

Methods of translation
It should be emphasized that the classifications discussed below are among a few typologies of translation methods used in the translation of legal terms that have been published globally - Covacs (1982: 89) or Harvey (2003).The classification by Hejwowski (2004: 77) and Weston (1993: 21) have been chosen for the research as the first one is to be applied while translating culture-specific items, while the second -to translate legal terms.Weston (1993: 21, 22, 23) defines the employment of functional equivalence as using a "TL expression which denotes the nearest equivalent concept" and considers the method as a perfect one.The application of such a method ignores the connection between given source language and target language structures and focuses on a target language text, which results in most natural version of translation (Weston, 1993: 21).Weston gives an example of using a functional equivalent translating le Conseil des ministres with the English the Cabinet which renders the meaning of the specific language culture-specific element (Weston, 1993: 21).Weston (1993: 22) emphasises that the decision to use a functional equivalent depends on the translator's knowledge and opinion as well as that in some cases a translator needs to select one out of two or three functional equivalents.Furthermore, functional equivalence should not be applied "where the referent of the TL term -usually an institution or an office -is peculiar to TL culture" (Weston, 1993: 22).For instance, le ministère des Finances should not be translated with the equivalent the Treasury but the Ministry of Finance (Weston, 1993: 22, 23).What is more, the scholar divides functional equivalents into generic and specific ones (Weston, 1993: 23).
Another translation method is "the method of formal (lexical) equivalence (at the level of either the word or higher units)" called literal translation (Weston, 1993: 24).While applying the method words and their syntagmatic relations are ignored (Weston, 1993: 24).The result of its application is "conveying the form of the original as well as the content" (Weston, 1993: 24).The usage of the method is not recommended unless a functional equivalent is a literal equivalent at the same time (court of appeal translated with cour d'appel) (Weston, 1993: 24).Weston divides literal translation into four types.The result __ 188 __ of the application of its first type is an equivalent that portrays the same or most nearly the same idea as the TL expression.In the case of the second type of literal translation the equivalent produced portrays a distinct idea which "does not correspond functionally at all or else not does so closely as an alternative, nonliteral translation", while in the case of the third type the equivalent does not correlate with any idea characteristic for the culture of a target language, but it is "semantically equivalent and fairly transparent in its general meaning" (Weston, 1993: 25).The fourth type of literal translation results in forming an equivalent that completely lacks clear significance.
Another method distinguished by Weston (1993: 26) is transcription and applied while source terms (and ideas they name) have no equivalent ideas in the target language culture.The method involves transcribing and glossing which may be effected in various manners.The first manner is to render a source language element in italics or between inverted commas and put a gloss in the brackets next to it, while the second manner involves putting a source language expression in the brackets after its first mention (in italics or between inverted commas) and with the gloss included in a text.
Another translation method is neologism (Weston, 1993: 28).There appear new notions absent in a target language that need to have their new target language equivalents that is why the formation of neologisms is sometimes indispensable.It is emphasised that translators should use existing words and phrases to translate new concepts and apply the neologism method especially in the cases where an equivalent formed out of the so-far used elements is too elaborate (Weston, 1993: 28, 29, 30).The fourth method by Weston is naturalisation that does constitute a type of word-for-word translation and of neologism (Weston, 1993: 28, 29, 30).Weston emphasises that "an established naturalisation can be regarded as a legitimate standard translation" (Weston, 1993: 30).Weston asserts that some source language proper names might have their naturalised target language forms.
In the book Kognitywno-komunikacyjna teoria przekładu Hejwowski classified nine translation methods.The first one, called reproduction without explanation involves using words that are reproduced from a source language and are closely bound to one culture (Hejwowski, 2004: 76, 77).The employment of the method may be accompanied by some explanation presenting the lexical field of a reproduced element, in which case the method is called reproduction with explanation (Hejwowski, 2004: 77).The third method is syntagmatic translation without explanation which involves literal translation of the elements of a phrase.If such an equivalent is accompanied by some explanation of its meaning -syntagmatic translation with explanation is applied (Hejwowski, 2004: 79).The fifth method is the so-called recognised equivalent and involves the usage of already commonly approved equivalents of given source elements which, most often, are proper names, titles or quotes (Hejwowski, 2004: 79, 80).The functional equivalent, on the other hand, refers to a situation where a translator uses an equivalent that names a phenomenon of a target language most similar to the phenomenon of the element present in a source text (Hejwowski, 2004: 81).
Descriptive equivalent is a strategy in which a specific word from the source text is replaced with its description in the target text.For instance, a descriptive equivalent for the term cardigan in Polish translation could be zapinany sweter [example by A.K.].This __ 189 __ process often results in one short word being translated with a long, complex sentence.The description cannot be too elaborate and the description should not convey the references to other elements of culture.Descriptive equivalent is used to translate terms which rarely appear in a source text and are not of great importance to the context (Hejwowski, 2004: 82, 83).Another method of translation is hypernym which means using an element of a more extensive lexical field in a target text (generalisation).An example of hypernym can be replacing the name pastis in translation with a broader term alcoholic drink [example by A.K.].The equivalent formed cannot convey the whole meaning of the original, an unspecified word (being the equivalent) can mean anything and a target reader is unable to recreate the intention of the source text author.It is suggested to use this method only when other methods have failed.Generalisation may be useful in translation where a proper equivalent does not exist in a target language and a translated word does not significantly affect the meaning of a target text (Hejwowski, 2004: 82).Omission, on the other hand, is a method that is often unacceptable and not considered as a proper solution of a translation problem according to Hejwowski (2004: 83).As a result of the application of the method some names of culture-specific concepts are eliminated in the process of translation.It should be underlined that cutting out even the shortest elements takes away the opportunity to become familiar with foreign culture (Hejwowski, 2004: 81).

Analysis
The table below presents the Polish terms under analysis and their English equivalents.The twelve Polish terms discussed serve as the first research sample, as it is planned to analyse at least sixty Polish terms to verify the thesis formulated herein.The first Polish term analysed is organy jednostki samorządu terytorialnego which names all authority bodies of one of the so-called local self-governing units (jednostki samorządu terytorialnego).The local self-governing units are: gmina (literally translated with the equivalent commune), powiat (literally translated as municipality) and województwo (literally translated as voivodship) (Zimmerman, 2022: 286, 308).Their authority bodies are, for a commune: rada gminy (literal translation: commune board) and wójt (literal translation: commune mayor) or burmistrz (literal translation: mayor) or prezydent (literal translation: president); for a municipality: rada powiatu (literal translation municipality council) and zarząd powiatu (literal translation municipality board); for a voivodship: sejmik województwa (literal translation voivodship seym) and zarząd województwa (literal translation voivodship board) (Zimmerman, 2022: 214).The equivalent applied in the translation is the phrase authorities of units of self-government and does not appear in the texts of the sources of the British law or Sketchengine.eudatabase or it does not appear in the abovementioned monolingual law dictionaries.It may be assumed that the syntagmatic translation method by Hejwowski and literal translation method (the second subtype) by Weston have been applied as the equivalent does not correspond functionally at all or else as an alternative of the source element.
Another term that appears in the source text and names an authority, namely organ samorządu terytorialnego, does constitute a lexical element of the above-discussed term.The term under research may refer to any of the abovementioned authority bodies of the local self-governing units: commune board, commune mayor, mayor, president, municipality council, municipality board, voivodship seym, voivodship board.The equivalent applied is authority of unit of self-government.The equivalent in question does not occur in the texts of the sources of the British law or Sketchengine.eudatabase or the abovementioned dictionaries.Thus it may be assumed that the syntagmatic translation method by Hejwowski and literal translation method (the second subtype) by Weston have been applied as well.
The third name of an authority body is organ administracji rządowej which may refer to any of the government administration authorities which are divided into the so-called central government administration and local government administration.The central government administration in Poland includes the Prime Minister Office and all ministeries.The local government administration, on the other hand, encompasses the so-called non-combined administration authority bodies supervised by a specific minister or another central government authority body as well as heads of public body corporates and heads of other public organisational units which perform the duties within government administration on the area of a given voivodship (Zimmerman, 2022: 184).The equivalent suggested, namely government administration authority, does appear in one legal instrument which is Housing Act 1988 in the following context: "In section 25 of the Local Government Act 1974 (local government administration: authorities subject to investigation), in subsection (1) after paragraph (bd) there shall be inserted the following paragraph […]", which shows that, in fact, the phrase government administration does not appear in the text but the word government has coincidentally been followed by the element authorities.The equivalent is not present in Sketchengine.eudatabase.The source __ 191 __ term has probably been formed as a result of the application of the syntagmatic translation method by Hejwowski as well as literal translation method by Weston.Another term under research is organy administracji publicznej (literal translation: public administration authority bodies) which has been translated with the equivalent: public administration authorities.The Polish source term refers to ministers, central government administration authority bodies, wojewodowie (literally translated with the equivalent voivodes), acting on their own behalf and other local government administration authority bodies called government administration [naming here both: zespolona administracja rządowa, literally translated with the equivalent combined government administration and niezespolona administracja rządowa (literally translated with the equivalent non-combined government administration)], authority bodies of local self-governing units as well as other state authority bodies and other subjects as long as they are empowered under the law or under agreements to deal with the matters mentioned in Article 1 of the Code of Administrative Procedure, namely, individual matters resolved via decyzje administracyjne (literal translation administrative decisions) or implicitly (with no decision issued) (Code of Administrative Procedure, Articles 1, 5, 122a).The equivalent discussed is public administration authorities which does not appear in the Sketchengine.eudatabase but does appear once in each of the following sources of the British law where it does refer to Romania: The Reporting of Savings Income Information (Amendment) Regulations 2006, The Reporting of Savings Income Information Regulations 2003 and Council Directive 2006/98/EC of 20 November 2006 adapting certain Directives in the field of taxation, by reason of the accession of Bulgaria and Romania.According to the classification by Hejwowski in the example discussed there has been probably applied the syntagmatic translation method as the equivalent suggested does not appear in non-specialised texts in English.According to Weston literal translation has been applied as in general the equivalent produced ignores the collocations of the words (the equivalent does not occur in the Sketchengine.eudatabase texts).
Wojewoda is another term which names an authority body under the Polish Code of Administrative Proceedings.The source element has been translated with the equivalent voivode which does appear in Polish-English dictionaries published between 2004 and 2019 (Ożga, 2004;2019), which makes the equivalent a recognised equivalent according to Hejwowski.However, the method mentioned is of the so-called secondary nature (Kizińska, 2021: 225) thus the translation method of the primary nature needs to be determined as well.The definition of the source term is: "a representative of the government in a voivodeship, appointed by the Prime Minister upon the application of the minister of the interior and administration; vice-voivodes are appointed by the minister upon the application of a voivode" (Zimmerman, 2022: 252).The equivalent suggested does appear once in Sketchengine.eudatabase, namely in the context of Transylvania: "János Hunyadi was voivode of Transylvania".Furthermore, it appears in one text of the sources of the British law: Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2017/417 and names a place, namely Strahil voivode which refers to an element of the Municipality of Kardzhali.It may be assumed that the so called partial semantic shift method (Kizińska, 2018: 248) has been applied as the equivalent has gained different meaning in a target text to the __ 192 __ one it holds in a source text.According to Weston the functional equivalent has probably been applied as the equivalent had already been used in the English language but with a different meaning.None of the methods by Hejwowski has presumably been applied.
The term organy naczelne (administracji rządowej) translated with the equivalent supreme authorities names the following authority bodies under the Administrative Procedure Law: Rada Ministrów (literal translation: Council of Ministers), Prezes Rady Ministrów (literal translation: Prime Minister), ministers.It should be emphasised that authority bodies under the administrative law have been divided into three types according to their territorial scope of actions: naczelne (supreme), centralne (central), and terytorialne (local) (Zimmerman, 2022: 252).The equivalent applied does appear in the definition of a term conference in the Schedule of the Act The Charities (Edgehill Theological College Scheme) Order (Northern Ireland) 2022 as well as in the definitions section of Regulation (EC) No. 2046/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No. 810/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council as an element of the phrase supreme authority of the International Olympic Committee.The equivalent does not appear in the Sketchengine.eudatabase in the plural form but does appear in the singular form.Partial semantic shift has been applied as the equivalent has gained different meaning in a target text compared to the one it holds in a source text (the meaning regarding the International Olympic Committee).According to Weston the functional equivalent has probably been applied as the equivalent had been already used in the English language but with different meaning.None of the methods by Hejwowski has presumably been applied.
One of the most prominent terms that appear in the first Division of the Code is sąd administracyjny translated with the equivalent administrative court which is probably both a functional equivalent by Weston and Hejwowski.The equivalent does appear in the Sketchengine.eudatabase as an element of the term Supreme Administrative Court and in its plural form, namely administrative courts.In the legislation texts it does appear in numerous acts including the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 -"Except for orders made by the court of its own initiative and unless the court otherwise orders, every judgment or order made in claims proceeding in the Queen's Bench Division at the Royal Courts of Justice, other than in the Administrative Court, will be drawn up by the parties, and rule 40.3 is modified accordingly".According to the definition of sądy administracyjne in the Polish act Ustawa z dnia 30 sierpnia 2002 r.Prawo o postępowaniu przed sądami administracyjnymi -The Act on the Proceedings before the administrative courts they are established to consider the court-administrative matters (Article 2 of The Act on the Proceedings before the administrative courts).Sądy administracyjne resolve the disputes between the local self-government units authority bodies and between samorządowe kolegia odwoławcze (literally translated as self-governing appeal committees) regarding their competence unless another act provides otherwise.Furthermore, they deal with competence disputes between the authority bodies of the above-mentioned units and the government administration authority bodies (Article 4 of The Act on the Proceedings before the administrative courts).The equivalent administrative court is defined as "Administrative Law Division of the High Court.Since October 2000 it has been known as the Administrative Court which is presided over by the Lord Chief Justice; its main jurisdictions are judicial __ 193 __ review, statutory appeals and applications, habeas corpus and extradition" (Greenberg, 2015: 65).Both the source element and the equivalent suggested name a court that deals with administrative cases and appeals but of course they are incongruent -in Poland the name is generic, while in English it may refer to the unique high court thus, as stated above, the functional equivalents by Hejwowski and Weston have been applied.
Other two terms under research are organy administracji zespolonej (literally translated as combined administration authority bodies) and organy administracji niezespolonej (literally translated as non-combined administration authority bodies).The term organy administracji zespolonej names such authority bodies as Policja (Police), Państwowa Straż Pożarna (State Fire Service), Państwowa Straż Rybacka (State Fisheries Service) or Inspekcja Handlowa (Trading Inspectorate).Administracja zespolona constitutes an element of the local government administration which is supervised by a voivode (Zimmerman, 2002: 259).Furthermore, there exists powiatowa administracja zespolona (literally translated with the equivalent municipal combined administration) which, in contrast to the combined administration on the voivodship level, encompasses not only the subjects of the government administration (such as Police, State Fire Service) but also of self-governing administration [such as powiatowy urząd pracy (municipal labour office) or starostwo powiatowe (municipal office)] (Zimmerman, 2002: 304).Administracja niezespolona (non-combined administration) is a part of local government administration in Poland and is not supervised by a voivode.The authority bodies of the non-combined administration are, among others, heads of recruitment military centres, heads of tax administration chambers, heads of tax offices and heads of circuit mining offices (Czuryk, Karpiuk, Kostrubiec, 2011: 274).The equivalents suggested for organy administracji zespolonej and organy administracji niezespolonej, are combined administration authorities and non-combined administration authorities, respectively and do not appear in the English language texts.On the basis of the definitions and the lack of occurence of the suggested equivalents it may be assumed that the equivalents are syntagmatic translation equivalents according to Hejwowski and literal equivalents according to Weston.Under the Polish administrative proceedings the so-called Prokurator Generalny is the supreme authority body of prokuratura (prosecutor's office).The office of Prokurator Generalny is held by the Minister of Justice (Prawo o prokuraturze -Law on Prosecutor's Office, Article 1).The equivalent General Public Prosecutor does not appear in the British legislation texts, the English language or dictionaries.Thus it may be assumed that the syntagmatic translation method by Hejwowski and literal translation method (the second subtype) by Weston have been applied.
The Polish term Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich (literally translated with the equivalent Commissioner for Civil Rights) has been translated with the equivalent ombudsman which has been capitalised in numerous contexts in the texts of the British legislation.According to the law dictionary ombudsman is "an officer appointed to investigate complaints against public authorities and similar bodies.The term is equivalent to Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration which is an office for the investigation of complaints about administrative action taken on behalf of the Crown" (Greenberg, 2015(Greenberg, : 1700(Greenberg, -1701)).The duties of Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich include the supervision over citizens rights being respected by state institutions; monitoring offices and various institutions with regard to whether they have acted lawfully; control over officers, courts, hospitals, schools and other services with regard to whether they have not neglected the cases reported thereto by citizens (Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej RPO, 2021).Having analysed the definitions, it may be assumed that both the source element and its equivalent name institutions the main duty of which is to supervise the actions of public institutions with regard to any complaints from the citizens thus the functional equivalents by Hejwowski and Weston have been employed.
Finally, organ kolegialny translated with the equivalent collective authority names an authority body that consists of more than one person.The equivalent appears in the Sketchengine.eudatabase in four contexts: commercial, legal, fiction/poetry and miscellaneous but not in the texts of the sources of British law.The authority bodies under the administrative law have been divided according to its members into monocratic and collective authority bodies (Zimmerman, 2022: 187).According to Weston the functional equivalent has probably been applied as the equivalent had already been used in the English language but with a different meaning.None of the methods by Hejwowski has presumably been applied.The equivalent has been formed as a result of the terminologisation method which involves a source language element serving as a specialised term in a target text (Kizinska, 2018: 249).

Conclusion
To conclude, it should be emphasised that this paper is a case study and the research project is to encompass the research of sixty Polish administrative law terms and their English equivalents published to date, to draw up a typology of translation methods used in the translation thereof.On the basis of the above research, however, it may provisionally be claimed that the published typologies by Hejwowski and Weston almost fully encompass the translation methods employed when translating Polish administrative law terms into English.In the case of three terms none of methods by Hejwowski has been applied, while in the case of nine terms both a method by Hejwowski and a method by Weston have been determined.
With regard to the frequency of the employment of the methods as many as seven times the literal translation method by Weston and syntagmatic translation method by Hejwowski have been applied (government administration authority, General Public Prosecutor, authority of unit of self-government).Furthermore, as many as five functional equivalents by Weston and two functional equivalents by Hejwowski have appeared (ombudsman, administrative court).There have been two cases of the application of partial shift method (exemplified by voivodship) and one of terminologisation method (exemplified by collective authority) with regard to the equivalents where the translation method by Hejwowski has not been determined.
It may be assumed that literal translation/syntagmatic translation have been used most often as the majority of the source elements (that name the types or are the names of authority bodies) that all appear in the first Division of the Code (Articles from 1 to 61 of the Code) are relatively elaborate.Furthermore, as it may be claimed, on the basis of the definitions of the source terms, the vast majority of the Polish authority bodies analysed are closely bound to the legal system of Poland as they refer to territorial division unique for Poland as well as its characteristic division of administration into the self-governing and governmental administration.

Table 1 .
Polish terms and their equivalents