Features of editing the translation of international agreements into Ukrainian language

The article is devoted to the study of the official translation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child into Ukrainian. The relevance of the study is due to the exceptional importance of the texts of international treaties both for the image of the state and for the correct interpretation and application of their provisions, as well as the need to improve the official translations of international treaties.

The linguistic analysis of the translation has shown a violation of the statutory procedure: only the Russian text of the treaty was taken as the basis for the Ukrainian translation, although the procedure for the official translation of Ukraine’s multilateral international treaties requires the use of authentic texts in several languages. In the process of comparing the Convention in the Russian and English languages, some substantive inaccuracies of the translation have also been noted. The identified short­comings of the Russian translation into Ukrainian have been analysed in the form of articles, which helped to systematically compare the provisions of the Convention, to identify errors, to suggest appropriate translation options, to draw conclusions.

A number of tracing paper from Russian (words and expressions) has been iden­tified in the Ukrainian text (Articles 1, 7, 9, 18, 19, 23, 24, 43). There have also been numerous instances of incorrect translation from the Russian language, which leads to semantic and stylistic inaccuracies (Articles 2, 3, 5, 9, 12, 19, 22, 25, 29, 30, 32, 37, 40). Involvement in the comparative analysis of the authentic text in English has shown errors in translation in both Russian and, as a consequence, Ukrainian. Inac­cu­racies found (Articles 5, 8, 9, 19, 22, 23, 24, 32, 38) adversely affect the correct interpretation and application of international standards, as they cause not only changes in sentence structure but also changes in accents and content. We have analysed all the inconsistencies in detail, and suggested the correct translation options. In this regard, the need to introduce a procedure for periodic review and correction of errors in official translations of international treaties ratified by our country is important and urgent.

Keywords: international agreement, diplomatic genre, official business style, text structure, text translation, lexical and grammatical features.

doi: 10.32403/0554-4866-2019-2-78-141-153