CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH URDU LANGUAGE OF OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

Abstract

The status of Urdu language has been vulnerable to critique for the last many decades. Pakistan as a developing country promotes the use of English language for official purposes to meet the international requirements. On the contrary, there is a constant constitutional obligation to implement Urdu as an official language. This bifurcation in the system has created confusions and multiple hindrances in developing communication at various levels in the context of prevailing supremacy of English language. The present research aims at finding the level of public understanding of Urdu language used in official documents. Furthermore, an analysis was done to gauge the translatability of the selected official Urdu words into easy Urdu words by general public. The analysis of the reception and replacement of the selected Urdu words by the public paved the way for the need of intralingual translation in the light of Skopos theory which gives pivotal status to the aim of translation. In this research, suggested aim of intralingual translation is to deliver the meaning of an official document to the receiver i.e, general public in this case.