Authors: Khasanova Shakhnoza
Abstract: This article investigates the lexical-semantic organization of French diplomatic discourse and the principal methods used to translate it into English. Diplomatic documents combine terminological precision with political caution; consequently, their meaning is produced not only by dictionary definitions but also by institutional convention, modality, collocation, politeness, and controlled ambiguity. The study applies descriptive, contextual, contrastive, and functional analysis to representative units drawn from recurrent diplomatic genres, including notes verbales, communiqués, declarations, agreements, and official statements. The analysis identifies eight central features: standardized terminology, formulaic expressions, polysemy, nominalization, modality, euphemistic mitigation, constructive ambiguity, and institutional collocation. It demonstrates that established equivalence is the safest method for conventional legal-diplomatic terms, whereas transposition, modulation, functional equivalence, explicitation, borrowing, calque, and cautious adaptation are required when structural or pragmatic asymmetry occurs. Particular attention is paid to the preservation of legal force and degrees of commitment. The article proposes a controlled translation workflow that integrates genre identification, terminology verification, pragmatic analysis, drafting, and bilingual quality assurance. It concludes that high-quality diplomatic translation is a form of disciplined intercultural mediation in which semantic fidelity, institutional consistency, and pragmatic equivalence must be evaluated together.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22913354
