COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS-BASED ASSESSMENT OF CONTEXTUALLY APPROPRIATE EQUIVALENT WORDS IN THE ROMANIAN TRANSLATIONS OF EU LEGISLATION.

The present paper1 attempts to discuss several cases of source text (ST) words and the target text (TT) equivalent words attributed to them, as well as of their target language (TL) one-to-one equivalents on the basis of componential analysis. This endeavour is focused on identifying the contextual sense components of these words and revealing the distinctive features that have made a certain TT word the most suitable translation of a ST word, although there is not a one-to-one equivalence relation between them. The contexts in which these particular words occur are represented by bilingual English-Romanian examples selected from our bilingual corpus of EU legal documents. Componential analysis can be used not only to single out the most appropriate translation solution during the process of translation, but also as a means to interpret an already chosen TL equivalent word by determining the sense components that can account for its context appropriateness and functionality, even though this equivalent word may not be the result of a componential analysis carried out by the translator, but merely an intuitive and/or experience-based choice. From a teaching-oriented perspective, the analysis conducted in this paper might represent a method for approaching componential analysis as translation procedure. By analyzing relevant bilingual examples, attempting to extract and compare the sense components of the ST and their TT equivalent words, as well as of their TL one-to-one equivalents, and determining the reasons why a particular TL equivalent word has been chosen, componential analysis can be more easily understood and put forth by students. Being part of a larger bilingual corpus-based research study concerned with investigating translation procedures in the official Romanian translations of the English EU legal documents, this paper also provides a quantitative approach as regards the frequency of occurrence of componential analysis as translation procedure in comparison with those of the other translation procedures that were identified and analyzed in the extended research study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]