For Linguistic Analysis of the New Constitution of Georgia

Abstract

Following the 2016 October parliamentary elections, the Parliament of Georgia initiated a process of comprehensive constitutional amendments. The parliamentary resolution of 2016 established the State Constitutional Commission with the task of drafting a new constitution providing for full compliance with the Constitution with fundamental constitutional law principles.

Thanks to many years of experience in translation in the legal field, we decided to carefully review the new draft law and evaluate it professionally. Finally, the results of our review, which included grammatical, stylistic and terminological corrections, we forwarded to the Office of the Speaker of Parliament and the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs. As a result, our remarks were discussed first in a working format, then at a plenary session in Kutaisi and finally, most of the corrections were reflected in the draft constitution.

Our comments, which were shared, included the mention of “the state borders” in singular, the correct use of prepositions, the contextual replacement of the word “private” with the word “personal”, the replacement of the foreign word “countersignature” with the Georgian equivalent, as well as other grammatical, some stylistic and terminological corrections. Unfortunately, various mistakes are observed both in English and Georgian translations of legal texts, which is mainly due to the confusion of translators in terminology.

The fact is that professional legal translators, editors and lawyer-linguists or terminologists are in demand in Georgia today. This means that the translation market is experiencing a lack of qualified legal translators/editors and lawyer-linguists or terminologists. As you know, we have to translate many pages of the EU laws. Unless a specific curriculum is developed for this purpose and a practical training of professional translators/editors are completed, we’ll have both defective Georgian texts and terminologically defective translations into English.