Expressing Modality in Commercial Agreements and Contracts—An Analysis of Polish-English Parallel Texts

Abstract

Modality is present in almost all languages. It expresses a wide range of linguistic aspects and meanings showing various social relations and attitudes. Among languages for special purposes, legal language is a distinctive type. This paper deals with expressing modality in legal texts (agreements and contracts) functioning in economic and trade environments and created in compliance with the company law provisions of the commercial companies code. It analyses parallel sets of agreements in Polish and English. The method of parallel text comparison is applied to establish potential translative dynamic equivalents in connection with such concepts as obligation, prohibition and permission. The problem seems to be multiaspectual. On the one hand, there is a difference in the grammatical structure of both languages, and on the other hand, the commercial texts themselves include elements considered to be an obligation for one party of the contract and a right for the other party. These instances are analysed in parallel documents in order to search for methods used by translators within this area: how often are expressions of the modal meaning and character used in both language versions of texts and what type of other linguistic means are employed to convey a similar meaning or attitude?