Legal Translation In The Late Qing Dynasty

The imperial feudal leaders of the Qing Dynasty intentionally cut off China from the outside world and considered themselves to be supreme. Empress Dowager Cixi had once forbidden propagating the western language, theology and technology, which made the Qing Dynasty hardly see western advanced development trends of that time. Until after the breakout of the Opium War, the late Qing Dynasty society had started to witness a series of variances because of the aggression of the western countries. During the late Qing Dynasty, many Chinese people with breadth of vision endeavored to seek an efficient way to save our country from perishing. This came to be the discussion focus between the pontificators and reformers that whether to'learn the skills from the west and subdue the west'or not, and this discussion mostly concerned whether or not to introduce and translate the western law. In order to take back the consular jurisdiction, pulls the building to lean, Empress Dowager CiXi sent out imperial decree to reform the law. The first problem that came was to find highly developed legal system to take as pattern in aspect and so on content, style, principle, system, so that"the translated laws of other nations'should be the paramount laws to be followed as to reform the feudal laws in the late Qing Dynasty."A great upsurge in legal translation had come by now. Juris prudential science, translation studies as well as the science of law language should pay more attention to the translation of laws in the late Qing Dynasty.In the late Qing Dynasty, on the one hand, the governing class needed the weapon produced by legal translation to fight against the western countries, on the other hand, many insightful learned in the Chinese society began to realize that only west legal knowledge could save this country. After the first Opium War, the reservation of local legal translators could not satisfy the huge social need, and therefore the legal translation in the late Qing Dynasty showed as two specular modes. One was conducted by the foreign translators, and the other one was conducted by local translators. This thesis comprises two parts. The first one includes the chapter one which introduces the social situation of the late Qing Dynasty and the development process of the legal translation. This part is the basis of the second part.The second part deepens the research of the first part. The second part includes the chapter three and the chapter four. This part discusses the motivating political factor and educational factor of different modes of legal translation, the methods adopted by different translators and its influences.