A Report On English-chinese Translation Of Legal Texts From The Perspective Of Translation Compensation Theory

The source text of this report is based on the slip opinion issued by the United States Court of Appeals on September 20,2016.The case is about whether the court should vacate the judgement issued by the district court on Chinese vitamin C manufacturer’s anti-trust act on the ground of “international comity”.This case involves the defense process of two Chinese enterprises and Ministry of Commerce of China in the court of another country.Moreover,the ministry appeared in the U.S.court as an amicus curiae for the first time,indicating the profound significance of this case during this heated period of China-U.S.trade war.As is known to all,this case is among other cases involving Chinese companies being taken to the court of the United States.By learning from the defense process of this case Chinese companies are able to better manage their trade relations with American companies.At the same time,the presence of the ministry as an "amicus curiae" could also be exemplary for Chinese authorities and regulators when it comes to handling international trade disputes in the future.It is,at the same time,of great significance for Chinese business community to learn the best way of defending themselves in international trade disputes.This report was completed with Ma Hongjun’s translation compensation theory as guidance in light of features of the source text.Difficulties arising in the process of the translation of the source text were solved by the strategies of explicit compensation,implicit compensation,compensation by splitting,compensation by merging,etc.The translation process will be discussed from three perspectives: lexical level,syntactic level and textual level.The report is composed by six parts: the introduction,the analysis regarding the source text,the summary of the translation process,the case analysis,the summary of the content of the report and the analysis of the problems encountered in the process of the translation and an appendix.In this report,the cultural defaults of legal text and application standards of translation compensation strategies would be discussed.The author concludes that the following principles should be followed in the practice of translation guided by the theory of translation compensation: firstly,the translator must fully understand the content that the author of the source text wants to express;secondly,the translator must fully consider the doubts that the target readers may have when reading;thirdly,the translator must explore a unified and accurate standard when applying translation compensation theory;and finally,abundant compensation could be avoided in the TT through revision.It is hoped that this report could enrich the translation compensation theory and provide more reference for legal translation practice.