Modal Verbs in Legal Translation With Reference to The Translation of the Iraqi Informatics Crime Law

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the role of modal expressions in both Arabic and English legal texts. Modal verbs have a distinguished place within legal English since the indicate the very function of legal language i.e.: obligation and permission. An attempt is made within this paper to corporate a quantitative along with the qualitative descriptive approach by applying the chosen data (an Arabic text of legal document namely the Informatics Crime Law in Iraq along with its translation that was done by the free word center) as a case study to illustrate the similarities and differences within the two languages.