the application of iso 704 in evaluating equivalents of legal terms a case study of judiciary terms in english and persian

Since science is developing faster than ever, and new concepts need to be named, it is important to have a standardized way of naming and/or translating these concepts. in this paper, the difference between the naming of “different kinds of judges in the u.s. judiciary” in english and persian and the suitability of persian equivalents have been analyzed in accordance with iso 704: 2009 principles and guidelines. this study, other than determining the suitability of some analyzed equivalents, can serve as a way of testing the usefulness of iso 704 guidelines for terminology work in the field of law and jurisprudence. the steps followed to conduct this study were: first, a small generic concept system was developed to locate these concepts in the relevant subject field. after that, some english terms designating the concepts in the concept system were chosen as samples to be analyzed. the delimiting characteristics and intentional definitions of the aforementioned terms were written. next, their persian equivalents were searched and found in different sources such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. lastly, the suitability of these equivalents was tested based on the iso principles for term formation (transparency, consistency, appropriateness, linguistic economy, derivability and compoundability, linguistic correctness, and preference for native language). after following those steps, the results showed that not only are the iso principles applicable to these terms and their equivalents, but they also give translators and other professionals concerned with choosing or coining equivalents helpful insights into the structure and suitability of those equivalents, e.g. the persian equivalent “قاضی ارشد” for “senior judge” lacks transparency because the part of the concept which is about the age of the judge cannot be inferred from “ارشد”, unlike “senior”.