A Report On The Translation Of Course Material For WIPO Academy Copyright And Related Rights

In the past decades,China has made remarkable achievements in IPR protection.However,there is still a long way to go for foreign-related IP protection given a shortage of talent in this area.As a result,the author chose to translate WIPO Academy’s distance learning materials,aiming to summarize translation strategies and skills for foreign-related IP training.The learning material has thirteen modules,targeting at Chinese IP practitioners and students who will attend the WIPO Learning Program and have prior knowledge about intellectual property.The author translated module 8 which consists of five copyright infringement cases in international trade.Each case is divided into three parts:the executive summary,the descriptive part,and the self-assessment questions.The source text,containing both details of the cases and legal provisions,belongs to a legal text.Guided by Skopos Theory,the author made a detailed analysis of the translation problems and reached the following conclusions:Guided by the Skopos Rule,the translator should identify the translation purpose.Considering that the legal learning material is professional and accurate,the primary goal is to provide accurate,professional,and unambiguous translations.First,in translating case names,common legal words and polysemous legal words,the translator should produce the most accurate and professional translation with the assistance of dictionaries,authority websites and the context.Second,when dealing with plural legal words,the plural meaning must be translated to ensure accuracy.Guided by the Coherence Rule,TT readers’ cultural background,social environment,education level,and linguistic preferences should be considered in information transmission.Therefore,methods like amplification can be adopted to make the source text understood by the recipients.Besides,long sentences can be translated to serve readers’ reading habits by using strategies such as activization,subject preposition,and paraphrasing.Based on the Fidelity Rule,when the overriding principle of Skopos and the rule of Coherence have been observed,the target text should be consistent with the source text in style,message,and sentence structure.The translation strategies summarized in the report have a guiding role in translating learning materials about copyright and related rights,which also offer guidance on the translation of legal texts.