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An Intertextual Approach To Translating Ancient Chinese Legal Texts Into English

Posted on:2009-03-15Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y C LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360278966567Subject:English Language and Literature
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Legal translation has a long history, and translation of legal documents is among the most important types of translation in the world. Legal translation, being a sub-type of special-purpose language translation in translation studies, is characterized by constraints arising from both legal language and legal culture. Approaches to legal translation studies are primarily supported by linguistic theories, and more attention has been given to the translation of present-day legal documents than that of antiquity both home and abroad. Up till now, the English translation of ancient Chinese legal documents is rarely dealt with in China and a systematic study is yet to be initiated. The present study, by utilizing Intertextual Theory, probes into the key issues of translating ancient Chinese legal texts into English with The Tang Code as a case study. It is an attempt aiming to establish a theoretical framework of translating ancient Chinese legal texts into English, providing guidance to legal translation practice in this particular area of translation studies, and hopefully shedding light on the transmission of ancient Chinese legal culture to the rest of the world and thus contributing to the construction of global cultural diversity.Firstly, this study discusses text typology and the interrelatedness of text typoplogy and translation, arguing that text typology, in a certain sense, is one of the decisive factors in determining the aims and strategies of translation. Secondly, translation is justified as an intertexual activity in nature between the source language and the target language, and legal translation, proven as an intertextual activity as well, is realized at three levels, i.e. intertextual transfer at the lexical, syntactic and textual levels. At the lexical level, the intertextual transfer covers reference, lexical reiteration, legal terminology and common words with legal meaning;at the syntactic level, the legal formulaic sentence constructions such as conditionals, permissions, demands, prohibitions;and at the textual level, generic, thematic/topical, structural and functional absorption and transformation.Thirdly, an intertextual theoretical framework of translating ancient Chinese legal texts is proposed, which consists of five parts, namely, the motivation, aim, criteria, levels and compensation of the intertextual transfer of ancient Chinese legal texts from Chinese into English.To be more specific, the generalities of human languages and similarities of legal thought patterns in different legal cultures serve as the basis of translation, this consequently being the motivation of legal translation.The goal of translating ancient Chinese legal texts into English is the intertextual transfer of the informative function and regulatory function between the source language and target language legal texts, but the transfer of the regulatory function is limited to the equivalence of legal effects at the linguistic level only rather than the equivalence of legal effects in legal operation. In view of the non-authoritative nature of acient Chinese legal texts, the two additional criteria of Plain Language Usage and Naturalized Syntactic Structures are supplemented to criteria of legal translation besides the regular criteria of legal translation such as accuracy and consistency. The levels of intertextual transfer refers to the macro-level and the micro-level. The macro-level intertextual transfer means that the source language and the target language legal texts are intertextuallly matched in organizational structures of part, section, chapter and article, etc. and the micro-level means that the source language legal texts are intertextually transferred into the target language at the lexical, syntactic and the textual level respectively. The compensation in translating ancient Chinese legal texts into English follows the five principles of need, relation, the same function, comparison and hierarchy, and compensation occurs at the lexical, syntactic and textual levels and the major compensation strategies are borrowing functional equivalents, using descriptive paraphrases in neutral terms and creating neologisms at the lexical level, and grammatical supplements and cohesive-device supplements and so forth at the syntactic and textual levels. Lastly, a case study of The Tang Code is presented where a comparative analysis between Wallace Johnson's English transation and the author's translation is conducted to support the above-mentioned arguments.In dealing with the translation of ancient Chinese legal texts into English, the research methodology of the present study is theoretical description combined with case analysis,therefore it is qualitative in nature.The author of this dissertation, after fully considering the uniqueness of the translation of ancient Chinese legal texts, modifies the general principles, aims and criteria of legal translation in general, and proposes a theoretical framework which is applied to the translation practice of ancient Chinese legal texts from Chinese into English. The case analysis is to verify, with examples in translation practice, the feasibility and practicability of the theoretical model proposed, and to further unveil the rules and laws to be obeyed in translating ancient Chinese legal texts into English, so that the theoretical model is to be improved and ancient Chinese legal texts in general are to be translated in a better manner and for a better quality. Therefore, the present study is theory-based and practice-oriented.
Keywords/Search Tags:ancient legal texts, The Tang Code, translation, intertextuality
PDF Full Text Request
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