Translation As Adaptation And Selection: Translators' Subjectivity In The Translation Of Legislative Texts

Adopting the Theory of Linguistic Adaptation and the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection as the theoretical foundation, the thesis explores the manifestation of translators' subjectivity in the translation of Chinese legislative texts into English. To achieve the objective of the present study, several research questions are raised: In what way may the translators' subjectivity be exhibited in the translation of Chinese legislative texts into English? Under the guidance of subjectivity, what specific choices have translators made in the translation process? What factors are involved? When different translators translate the same legislative texts, what can be revealed from their different choice-makings under the guidance of their subjectivity?The research suggests that legal translators' subjectivity plays an active and central role in the translation process of legislative texts and can be observed from the following three aspects: syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. The translators' initiative may guide their choice-makings properly in words of Latin and French origin, archaic deictics, formal words, technical words and parallelism, and their rendering of legal speech acts and legal definitions, which is often adapted to the linguistic contexts of English legal language. The translators' creativity plays a great role in their choice-makings in deletion, addition, transposition, negative structure, reorganization of inserted qualifications, and understanding of theme and rheme, which is intended to adapt to specific linguistic contexts, the mental and social worlds of the translators and the intended readers. However, such creativity is subject to certain conditions and constraints. All these shed light on the choice-making process of legal translators who must decide when, where, why, how and to what extent they can be creative.After comparing two English versions of Insurance Law of the People's Republic of China, the study reveals that translators, under the guidance of their subjectivity, may make corresponding choices consciously and achieve a better result in the translation of legislative texts if they are well aware of the importance of the relevant factors which affect their choice-makings.The present study has made a tentative effort to synthesize linguistic and translation theories and legal translation practices. It has revealed, to a more or less extent, the manifestation of the translators' subjectivity in the translation of legislative texts through the analysis of their choice-making processes and the relevant factors adapted thereto. It is hoped that the study may somehow enlighten novice translators to make correct choices consciously and adaptively, and speed up and improve their translation in their future legal translation practice.