ENGLISH-IGBO TRANSLATION OF CHAPTER 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, 1999 IN COMMENTARY

Abstract

The rule of law is the hub around which the wheel of democracy revolves. Law and order in every nation of the world largely depend on the awareness of the codes regulating conducts at every level of authority and every sector of her economy by the people therein. A major reason for the breakdown of law and order in today’s Nigeria is ignorance of the law, especially by the illiterate masses, deficient in English-the major language of the laws in Nigeria. The need to translate legal codes in operation in Nigeria into her indigenous languages as a tool for national orientation through the instrumentality of the mass media cannot be over emphasized. The thrust of this paper is thus, to translate selected texts from chapter 4 of The Constitution of the Federal Republic Of Nigeria, 1999, which deals with “ Fundamental Human Rights”, and to feature a commentary exposing the linguistic elements of the original texts suitable for, or justifying the recourse to some conventional translation techniques in the operation, alongside problems arising from culture-bound terms in the texts and the terminological techniques applied in the quest for their effective translations in the target language.