Lexical uncertainties confronted by government translators when translating legal documents from Sinhala to English

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to find the lexical uncertainties confronted by government translators who have less than one- year experience in their profession. The mixed methodology was employed to gather the primary data. An error analysis was done after having asked 25 selected translators to translate different legal documents. It is found out that ambiguity, vagueness, lack of knowledge of context, vagueness and legal terminology have mostly caused producing non or less acceptable translation. Out of those five lexical uncertainties, the researcher has found legal terminology as the lexical uncertainty most frequently confronted by translators in translating legal documents. To collect more data, a questionnaire was also distributed to the sample population. As recommendations to solve these issues, the research suggests the use and the maintenance of legal glossaries, meeting law experts, gathering legal knowledge, extensive reading and getting help from online sources and books.