Skopos In Legal Translation: A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Labor Contract Law Of The People's Republic Of China

With the further progress of"globalization", various kinds of economy and cultures have gradually mingled and fused. In the rush of the world, laws and rules gradually play a vital role to ensure the smooth development of the whole society. Globally, the effective translation of various legal texts thus turns to be a crucial method to solve problems and to remove obstacles among different law systems, languages and cultures.However, compared with large amounts of translation practice of legal texts worldwide, the study of legal translation itself has never gone that far. Traditionally, legal translation was always regarded as one kind of exchanges of language, mainly studied from the lexical or syntactic aspects. The translators simply pursued the fidelity to the source text with neglect of the specialty of legal language. In reality, legal translation is a complex subject that may influence and be influenced by various aspects such as the translator's strategy, the target readers, the function expected, etc. The study of it should never stay at the linguistic aspects only.In the past few decades, the study on legal translation has extended beyond just linguistic concerns. And since many different roles of legal translation in communication have been found with correspondingly different purposes and functions, the Skopos theory, put forward by Hans J. Vermeer, a German functionalist, has caught more and more attention in the field because of his emphasis on importance of the target in legal translation.This paper, thus, is a tentative study based on the Skopos theory, focusing on the influence of purposes or skopos on legal translation. Compared with some general translation theories, functionalist translation theory represented by the Skopos theory has been highlighted in this paper to be more suitable to legal translation. Theoretically and practically speaking, skopos is believed to be the prerequisite in legal translation which is featured by a special purpose. It is hoped that through the comparative study of two English versions of Labor Contract Law of People's Republic of China, the skopos'influence on legal translation can be clearly summarized, and therefore, some more factors such as purpose or function of translating can be considered as the possible assessment criteria for legal translation.It is hoped that the study can shed light on the improvement of legal translation theory and practice that are based on the understanding of translation purpose, and also provide help to the relevant translators and learners in this field.