A comparative study of aspects of an EU regulation relating to consumer rights by analysing the Maltese, English, and French versions of the selected regulation

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on three language versions of Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 October 2004 on cooperation between national authorities responsible for the enforcement of consumer protection laws (the Regulation on consumer protection cooperation)1. The three languages are English, Maltese and French. The analysis of the three languages leverages the Term Shuttle tool, which is a structured way how equivalent terms in each language are grouped and defined before the actual translation work on the source commences. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of the lexical, morphological, syntactical and semantical aspects of the selected texts, which lead to the comparing and contrasting of the linguistic elements relevant to the three languages. The dissertation is divided into six chapters. The first chapter gives a brief overview on the concept of multilingualism in the EU, the definition of a “Regulation”, as well as the languages of the EU, EU documents and how one can access them. The second chapter explores the various subjects related to this dissertation and the views of theorists and linguists. The third chapter explains the methodology applied to compile the different terms and phrases from the Regulation and their analysis. The fourth chapter presents the term shuttle while the fifth chapter comprises the core study of this dissertation: the analysis. The final chapter discusses certain differences which came to light during the analysis as well as points which could be further studied.