A Project Report On The Translation Of Provisions Of Jiangsu And Shanghai On Unemployment Insurance

This project report selects two texts with similar theme, Provisions of Jiangsu on Unemployment Insurance and Provisions of Shanghai on Unemployment Insurance, as the research text. These two provisions are a typical type of local legislative text. The former Provisions promulgated recently cover such subjects as the composition and use of unemployment insurance funds, the standard and calculation of unemployment insurance benefits, etc. The latter Provisions promulgated earlier cover such subjects as the application and verification of unemployment insurance, the calculation and receiving of unemployment insurance benefits, etc. By research on and practice of local legislative translation, the author aims to have a better understanding of such type of text.Two provisions have professional, formal and authoritative language and logical content. Meanwhile, the research on them combines two disciplines, laws and English. Therefore, this offers a great research value to these provisions. On lexical level, two provisions use a large number of formal words and legal terms, along with some words and expressions with Chinese characteristics. On syntactic level, declarative sentences and imperative sentences are most employed. Moreover, there is no shortage of long sentences containing complex internal structure, often featuring fixed sentence pattern.During the translation process, the author mainly tackled major difficulties on lexical and syntactic level with the principle of "legal functional equivalence". For example, using authoritative words in English to embody the authority of laws when translating; adopting collocation in English with formal style to show the professionalism of legal language; referring to translated versions from official channels and making some adjustments when translating words and expressions with Chinese characteristics; dealing with long legislative sentences by adding subjects or conjunctions which introduce adverbial clauses of condition in sentences. All these methods applied in the translation aim to achieve equivalence in legal effect. Although this project report still needs improving, the author hopes to offer some help for future research.