The Phenomenon of Synonymy: A Comparison of the French and Macedonian Legal Terminologies

Abstract

The Phenomenon of Synonymy: A Comparison of the French and Macedonian Legal Terminologies

Synonymy is a language phenomenon that is viewed in a different way by the lexicologists and the terminologists. For the lexicologists synonymy contributes to the diversity of the language, whereas for the terminologists it leads to the imprecision of the specialized communication. The aim of this paper is to compare the manifestations of this phenomenon in both French and Macedonian language of law, specialized language that insists a lot on the precise formulation.
The comparative analysis takes into consideration two big synonym groups: semantic and stylistic synonyms. The analysis of the synonyms belonging to the first group shows the role of the context when choosing an adequate synonym. On the other hand, the analysis of the stylistic synonyms, concentrates more on the expressive values of different terms. It also shows the presence of different types of synonyms in different languages i.e. presence of geographic synonyms in French, or presence of different types of historic synonyms in the two languages.
Pointing out the different meaning nuances and the proper ways of use of the terms can be of crucial importance for the translator, especially for the legal texts translator.

Key words: terminology, law, synonyms, French language, Macedonian language.