A Report On E-C Translation Of Introduction To The Law Of Contract (Excerpt)

Introduction to the Law of Contract,which is not available in Chinese,is a systematic introduction to Anglo-American contract law.This report covers Chapter One to Chapter Four of the source text,totaling more than 20,000 words,which include the definition of the contract,offer,acceptance and consideration.The source text belongs to a legal academic text.It is featured with frequently-used vocabularies such as polysemes and legal terms,as well as many attributive clauses,passive sentences and commonly-used legal sentence patterns,thus,it is difficult to reach the equivalence between the target text and the source text in most cases.Based on the content and stylistic features of the source text,the translator adopts relevant translation strategies under the guidance of Vermeer’s Skopos Theory with the purpose of providing a Chinese version for those who study law and engage in legal work in China and promoting legal learning and exchanges Therefore,the translation should not only accurately convey the relevant information of Anglo-American contract law,but also conform to the Chinese expression norms of relevant laws.To achieve the above requirements,several translation methods and techniques are applied in the translation.At the lexical level,taking full account of the differences between Chinese and English legal terms,the translator adopts literal translation to translate the legal terms of the source text.At the syntactic level,the translation techniques of shift and embedding are adopted to deal with the translation of passive sentences,attributive clauses and commonly-used legal sentence patterns so as to make the translation conform to Chinese expressions.At the discourse level,as to the illustrations and comments contained in the source text,the translator employs such translation techniques as amplification,omission,division and repetition to achieve the logical cohesion and semantic coherence of the target text,which can help the target readers understand the source text.Guided by the Skopos Theory,this report conducts a case study of the translation of the source text,and takes an in-depth analysis of the methods and techniques adopted by the translator to render polysemes,legal terms,passive sentences and attributive clauses.It is found that the Skopos Theory of the Functionalist School is of guiding significance to the translation of this legal academic text.The skopos rule points out the direction for the translator,and the rules of coherence and fidelity clarify the translation strategy.Meanwhile,the Skopos Theory frees the translator from the principles of "how to translate",and gives her more freedom.