Legal Translation: An Act Of Communication In The Mechanism Of Law

In the history of human civilization, legal translation, as a sort of special-purpose text translation, can date back to the very ancient times, and it played an essential role in the development of human civilization. In modern times, with the rapid development of science and technology, the tendency of globalization promotes the developing intercultural communication between different nations, from which it is unavoidable that some disputes and problems may arise. Law, as an efficient tool to solve such troubles, has an increasing effect and influence to people's life, so legal translation becomes an emergent task for the international society. However, compared with the large amount of daily output of translation of legal documents in international society, theoretic study on legal translation is rather underdeveloped. Lawyers and linguists tend to do some micro research such as on the levels of terminology and syntax, and they believe that general translation theory can also apply to legal translation. Actually, as a sort of special-purpose text translation, legal translation has its own characteristics. According to Susan Sarcevic, legal translation should be considered not only as a process of linguistic transcoding but also as an act of communication in the mechanism of the law. Text producers and receivers are expected to establish a dynamic relationship. As in general communication, legal communication also has its actual and intended addressees, in other words, the direct and indirect addressees. Since legal communication is a form of specialized one, naturally the actual or direct addressees of legislative texts must also be specialists. To sum up, it can be said that communication in legislative process occurs primarily between two main groups of specialists: lawmakers who made the law (policymakers, drafters, legislators) and lawyers who interpret and apply the laws (attorneys, administrators, judges) (Sarcevic, 1997:60). To be an effective text producer in legal communication, the translator must act pursuant to the role he plays. Beyond doubt, the quality of the translated legal text is to some extent influenced by the role played by the legal translator. Traditionally the legal translator acted as a mediator between text producer and receiver. It was not until the twentieth century that the legal translator succeeded in converting his/her passive role in the communication process into an active one, finally emerges as a text producer and ultimately a co-drafter (like the situation in Canada and HongKong in China), with new authority and responsibility. In accordance with this situation, it is generally agreed that legal translators should not overstep their authority and must be constantly be on the guard of the goal of legal translation ( to produce a text that will preserve the unified legal function and effect of the single instrument by guaranteeing uniform interpretation and application) (Sarcevic, 1997:72). Taken all these into consideration, legal translators must be thoroughly familiar with the legal requirements and linguistic features of legal language to avoid making any common errors, redundancy or distortion made by non-professionals. The enactment and implementation of the Contract Law of the People's Republic of China is a milestone in our nation's economic life since China's implementation of the policy of reform and opening to the outside, which plays an essential role in regulating and perfecting the socialist market economic order with the Chinese characteristics. The two English parallel texts, one published by China Legal System Publishing House, the other by China Fangzheng Press, are so far the most authoritative versions appeared in the mainland of China, which theoretically have the same validity and enforcement as the source text in the perspective of legal status. By conducting a contrastive study of the two English versions, the author of this thesis tentatively applies the latest theoretic consideration of legal translation to the practice of legal translation, aimin...