Traduire I'Asile: Une enquete sur le systeme d'asile

Abstract

Traduire l'asile is a project that investigates the International Refugee Regime through the lense of translation, with the purpose of advocating for greater linguistic accessibility to documents for asylum and providing a document of reference for translators seeking to translate the document into other languages. The paper is divided into three parts: the first part focuses on establishing a preliminary understanding of refugee status, including reference to the definition of a refugee in international law and in the US legal system; the second part examines translation theory and comparative stylistics, recognizing important preliminary decisions that a translator must make before undertaking a translation, including the question of equivalence vs function and instrumentalist vs hermeneutic models of translation; and lastly, the third part examines particular difficulties that I experienced in translating the 1-589 Form, Application for Asylum and Withholding of. Removal from English to French, including specific references to the 1-589 Form with regards to equivalence, semantic range, syntax, preposition usage, gender, and the employment of articles. This paper is supplemented by an abbreviated table of terminology bases developed during the process of translation (Appendix A) and the full, translated 1-589 form (Appendix B).