Ukrainian: use of parentheses to indicate an alternative?

Gavril

Senior Member
English, USA
Excerpt from a Ukrainian court document.

Якщо в судовому засіданні було оголошено лише вступну та резолютивну частини судового рішення або у разі розгляду справи (вирішення питання) без повідомлення (виклику) учасників справи, зазначений строк обчислюється з дня складення повного судового рішення.

How should the parts in parentheses be understood?


1. As restatements of the preceding word/phrase?
Thus, повідомлення (виклику) = "the notification (in other words, the summoning)"

or

2. As alternatives to the preceding word/phrase?
Thus, повідомлення (виклику) = "the notification (or the summoning)"


Please let me know if I should clarify my question any further.

Thanks,
Gavril



[Update: I initially had an English translation of the entire quoted sentence, but I deleted it because it obscures what I'm trying to ask.]
 
Last edited:
  • Ukrainian punctuation essentially calques Russian (the syntax is extremely close anyway), so basically it can mean either of that, depending on the context, style etc. To be entirely sure in this particular case you would probably need an expert in the Ukrainian legal language.
     
    Thanks.

    In English punctuation, I'd say that the second option is non-standard.

    Thus, for example, "Taking a car (bus) to work" would not typically be understood as "Taking a car or bus to work" -- to convey that, you need additional words and/or punctuation, such as a slash ("Taking a car (/ bus) to work").
     
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