Vlasenko Svetlana V.

The article focuses on some aspects of conveying meanings of the category of number when translating legal English terms from various fields of the law into Russian. The examples given are illustrative of the variability in grammatical forms of the singular and the plural which denote similar or identical terminological meanings. Translation correspondences for English legal terms and terminological expressions cited from specialized bilingual dictionaries indicate the importance of taking into account the semantics of singularity and plurality in legal translation. The article accentuates the variability of grammatical forms used by legal English and legal Russian to convey the meanings of number and frequent discrepancies of those forms in translation.

This article addresses the phenomenon of eponymy in legal terminology as a translation problem. Dictionary definitions of eponyms show inconsistencies in treating these units by lexicographers. The examples given are indicative of eponymic terms both in legal English and legal Russian being complex units of nomination. Legal eponyms generate technical terminology that is challenging for perception and comprehension; its translation requires explication techniques. Such recent neologisms as Brexit and Megxit, which have emerged as eponymic internationalisms, allow to emphasize the significance of studying eponymy in the language of the legal profession and in legal translation.

 The article addresses English–Russian dictionary translations and their quality, specifically those translations offered by electronic dictionaries, in terms of their equivalence and acceptability in the target language.  The shared opinion of the authors, one of whom is a native Russian-speaking scholar in English Studies, while the other is a native English-speaking scholar in Russian Studies, is based on the belief that examples of inadequate dictionary translations should not be ignored by either translation market participants, or those with responsibilities for preparing future translators, since these cases may establish unacceptable translation precedents.  The relevance of these issues is due to the easy accessibility and enormous popularity of electronic dictionaries as a source of instant knowledge. Another reason why the quality of English-Russian translations in bilingual electronic dictionaries may cause a significant problem is that they are used, along with other resources, as corpora for machine translation software. Examples of dictionary translations are analysed in detail and contrasted against alternative and semantically divergent readings.