Translation Study On Laws And Regulations From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Translation of legal texts as a type of special purpose text translation,has always been a hot topic.The particularity of legal translation is determined by the nature and function of the legal text itself.The texts chosen in this report,Regulations on the Protection of Suzhou Classical Gardens and Regulations on the Protection of Ancient Villages in Suzhou,belong to legislative texts,whose main functions are regulatory,prescribing specific ways of conduct to be observed by individuals and specifying what members of society must do,what they cannot do,what they can do,or what they are explicitly authorized to do.Therefore,translators of legal texts should not only achieve semantic equivalence but also equivalence of legal functions between the source text and target text.Legal translators must be able to use the language effectively and express the legal action which can achieve the intended legal effects.The particularity of the legal text lies in its authority and force.The solemn,formal,accurate,authoritative and concise nature of the legal text is the manifestation of its authority and force.In other terms,the special style of the legal text is a necessary way to realize its legal function.Therefore,it is of prominent importance to achieve stylistic equivalence between the source text and target text.Because English and Chinese are fundamentally different,and also,common law and civil law are categorized into two different legal systems,it is necessary to carry out translation based on the differences and the characteristics of English and Chinese legal texts in order to achieve stylistic equivalence between source text and target text.In this report,under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence,the author analyzes the characteristics of English and Chinese legal texts on lexical,syntactic and textual levels,and focuses on the characteristics of English language of the law.Taking Regulations on the Protection of Suzhou Classical Gardens and Regulations on the Protection of Ancient Villages in Suzhou as examples,this paper illustrates how to achieve stylistic equivalence between the translated and the original texts in terms of vocabulary,sentence and style.The author elucidates how to realize stylistic equivalence between the source and target texts on the three above-mentioned levels in C-E legal translation,so as to give the target text authority and the force,and achieve equivalence of legal functions.The report is divided into four parts:task description,translation process,case study and conclusion.Among them,the third part,case study,is the center of the report,where the author analyses how to achieve stylistic equivalence from lexical,syntactic and textual levels of legal translation.