Comments On The English Version Of Special Maritime Procedure Law Of The People's Republic Of China

This thesis presents a preliminary study of the features of legal document translation through making comments on the English version of Special Maritime Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China.Special Maritime Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China,adopted at the 13th Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China on December 25, 1999, went into effect as of July 1, 2000. The enactment of the Law has met the actual needs of Chinese maritime judicial practice and accorded with international maritime handling principles and rules. It is very significant in promoting the development of maritime shipping and foreign trade, strengthening the reform and opening, protecting national interests, and embodying the status of China as a large shipping state.The language issues should be given the utmost priority to after China's accession to the WTO. So, it's quite necessary to discuss the English version of the Law. However, few people have made the relevant analyses of this Law from the linguistic angle. The English version of the Law would directly impose impact upon the shipping operation, foreign investment and even the profile of China in the international shippingcircle. Therefore, the author has, in light of the accumulation of translation experience, made comments and analyses and appropriate corrections on the English version of the Law, attempting to find some rules in the translation of legal documents as well.To write this dissertation, the author has accomplished the perusal of scores of linguistics and translation reference books, especially on the translation of legal English so as to summarize the basic features of legal English and some issues in the translation of legal English that are worth consideration. This thesis focuses on the comments on the Law with the linguistic knowledge. These comments are divided into several components: the lexical aspect falling upon the misuse or improper use of words, particularly the- shipping, terminology; the syntactic aspect concentrating on the inappropriate sentence structure; the stylistic aspect including the comments on the solemnity, seriousness and formalness of English laws and regulations.Through the analyses, the author has made overall comments on the English translation of the Law and obtained some principles of regularity in the translation of legal documents. During the one-year hard work, the author ? came to see the urgency to improve the study of translation oflegal English in China because there are )&r