Terminological suffixing and derivation of Korean legal terms: aspects of translation into Russian and Ukrainian

Abstract

This article has two objectives: 1) to analyze terminological suffixing as a way to derive legal terms in Korean which belong to various sub-spheres of law; 2) to suggest the translation of the derived terms into Russian and Ukrainian. The paper focuses on the 11 derivation patterns which employ Korean terminological suffixes <관>, <권>, <금>, <료>, <물>, <법>, <비>, <서>, <인>, <자> and <지> as well as their products - three-component derivatives. To achieve the goal a brief insight into theoretical background of suffix definitions in Korean language, namely in its Sino-Korean lexicon, was provided. After that the definition of ‘terminological’ suffixes was considered in the paper. These two criteria were used to analyze the legal terminology of Korean language and select those three-component units which were derived with the help of the above-mentioned Sino-Korean terminological suffixes. The paper aims to provide a proper translation of the corresponding Korean terms into the two target languages. This goal is stipulated by the needs of inter-cultural communication and growing Korean-Russian and Korean-Ukrainian contacts. Unfortunately, the existing Korean-Russian and Korean- Ukrainian dictionaries either do not provide the translation of many terminological units in focus, or their rendering can not be considered satisfactory. Thus, this article suggests an analysis of 11 terminological derivation patterns in the Korean language. As a result, the structure of 167 Korean terms was studied and their suitable equivalents in Russian and Ukrainian languages were suggested.