Patterns of modality and functional equivalence in the language of contracts: A corpus-based, intra-/interlinguistic, intercultural study for translation professionals and educators

This comparative study aims to make a three-fold contribution to the analysis of the language of contracts in Italian and English. It will first illustrate how deonticity is conveyed by highlighting patterns of modality in contract texts and providing a comparative analysis of linguistic variation across cultures. It will then investigate some corpus-driven collocations that constitute cross-cultural challenges in order to identify any relations binding their conceptual, intercultural legal features so as to find appropriate functional equivalents in the target language and culture. Finally, it will illustrate problem-solving strategies for professional and educational purposes, and prove how translators can achieve epistemic fluency, growth in conceptual content and competent communicative action.