On The English Version Of Company Law Of The People's Republic Of China

This thesis presents a preliminary study of the features of legal document translation and makes an attempt to put forward an evaluating criterion of "correspondence in meaning, and similarity in function" through making comments on the English version of Company Law of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as "Company Law").Company Law plays an important role in deepening China's enterprise reform, establishing modern enterprise system and promoting the development of the socialist market economy system. It contributes to standardizing the activities of companies, protecting the legitimate rights and interests of companies, shareholders and creditors, and maintaining socio-economic order. In the meantime, the English version of Company Law not only helps encourage legal exchange between China and foreign countries, but also helps foreign investors acquaint with China's market economy system and modern enterprise system as well as the legal basis and legal guarantee for the company system so as to attract more foreign investment and strengthen Sino-foreign cooperation in the economic field.With China's accession to the WTO and its deepening of reform, more and more legal documents will be translated into English and introduced to the world. However, merits and deficiencies co-exist in the legal document translation at present. In the circumstances, this thesis is an attempt to shed light on standards of legal document translation.The thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter I is a brief introduction to the background and the main content of Company Law as well as the importance of the English version.The first half of Chapter II deals with stylistic and linguistic features of legal English. The second half proposes the evaluation criterion for the English version of Company Law: "correspondence in meaning and similarity in function"(Chen Hongwei, 1997), which is based on the semiotic approach to meaning and Peter Newmark's classification of the function of language. Furthermore, it points out that the criterion for evaluation proposedin this thesis has the same nature as China's traditional translation standard "faithfulness" and Nida's "functional equivalence" and the only difference is that this criterion gives priority to the meaning and function of language which is viewed as a communication means. At the end of this chapter, it is stressed that meaning and function of language are dependant on each other and they shouldn't be treated in isolation.Chapter III, by adopting the criterion of "correspondence in meaning and similarity in function" and taking into consideration the stylistic and linguistic features of legal English, investigates in detail the merits of the English version of Company Law. For the purpose of clear analysis, the comments are made from the perspective of "correspondence in meaning" and "similarity in function" respectively. In the meantime, the writer reiterates the principle that meaning and function cannot be treated in isolation.Chapter IV gives an exposition of the demerits mainly in four aspects and some tentative corrections are also proposed, which might contribute to the improvement of the English version commented.Conclusion is reached in the end. Meaning and function are intrinsic features of any kind of text, including legal documents. They are inseparable and dependant on each other. Good translation is realized through excellent representation of both meaning and function of language. Therefore, the criterion of "correspondence in meaning, and similarity in function" is applicable to the translation of legal documents, with the emphasis laid on "correspondence in designative meaning", and "similarity in informative and vocative function". Judged by this criterion, the English version of Company Law, to a certain degree, retains the meaning and style, and reproduces the function of the original Chinese legal document. On the other hand, it does have several obvious deficiencies, including unidiomatic expressions of some legal or economic terminologies, the abuse of auxiliary verb "shall" and of passive voice as well as the lack of brevity and terseness. Finally, the writer hopes that the criterion of "correspondence in meaning and similarity in function" will contribute to the improvement of legal document translation in China.