Summary: 1. Introduction. – 2. Translation of Legal Terminology within the European Union-Ukraine Approximation Process. – 3. Translation of the Ukrainian Term ‘Maloznachna Sprava’ in English within the Scope of Simplified Civil Procedure. – 3.1. Small Claim – ‘Maloznachna Sprava’ Correlation: Concept Analysis. – 3.2. Term Translation: Options and Choices. – 4. Concluding Remarks
AJEE Collection of Articles on Small Claims
The article is devoted to the problem of translating legal terms from Ukrainian into English on the basis of a case study of a newly-coined term in Ukrainian legislation – ‘maloznachna sprava’. The relevance of the topic of legal translation from English into Ukrainian and vice versa has become especially acute in light of the Ukraine-EU approximation agreement. The author emphasises the necessity to perform concept analysis between the terms in the EU and Ukraine simplified procedures and comes to the conclusion that despite having surface similarity to the EU term ‘small claim’, the Ukrainian term ‘maloznachna sprava’ is, in fact, a much wider concept. A range of translations of legal neologisms are described in the article, and the need to use a literal translation of the term is substantiated. As a result of the analysis of possible translation options and the ECtHR translation precedent, it is recommended that the term ‘maloznachna sprava’ should be translated as ‘insignificant case’ within the sphere of Ukrainian civil procedure