A Report On The Translation Of Commons And Common Fields Or The History And Policy Of The Laws Relating To Commons And Enclosures In England(Excerpt)

The report attempts to probe into the translation of English literature on legal history from the perspective of the theory of semantic translation.The translation material is derived from an academic work,Commons and Common Fields or The History and Policy of the Laws Relating to Commons and Enclosures in England written by a British jurist Thomas E.Scrutton.The author of the source text presents the development of laws with regard to the commons in England from a historical perspective by describing their origins,the changes in the rights of the commons and agricultural policies as well as modern laws and the reforms required.A part of the fourth and fifth chapters is selected for the translation.And the author tries to seek feasible methods to convey the precise contents and flavor with an analysis of the type and characteristics of the original text,based on the text typology theory proposed by Peter Newmark.As a book on legal history,it is featured by formal and solemn language.In terms of words,there are numerous polysemous words,legal terms and proper names.In terms of sentences,there’re many complicated sentence structures.Also,poems and other scholars’ comments have been cited to express people’s dissatisfaction with enclosures at that time.According to these features,the author finds that the semantic translation theory should be applied to this translation practice.Semantic translation focuses on the original text and author,trying to recreate the contents and features of the original text.Thus,the author attaches great importance to contextual meanings of polysemous words,legal terms as well as proper names so as to determine their corresponding translation apart from dictionaries and related materials.In addition,the author attempts to retain sentence structures and emotions of the source text by means of formal and objective language.The report consists of four parts.Part One makes a brief introduction of the source of the translation task,the author and content of the original text,and significance of the translation.Part Two describes the translation process which includes preparation before translation,analysis and modification of the first and the second draft,and further polishing of the final draft.Part Three is case analysis in which the author collects words and difficult sentences of the original text,analyzes and addresses these difficulties based on the theory of semantic translation proposed by Peter Newmark.Part Four is a summary including unresolved issues and relevant inspirations.