Chinese And English Thinking Styles And C-E Legal Translation

This thesis, through a comparative study of the thinking styles of Chinese and English people, explores the thinking underlying the Chinese and English languages, and attempts to apply the results of such survey to C-E legal translation under the guidance of Teleology.Language is the physical shell of the thinking of its speaker. Translation, a rather practical bilingual activity for cross-culture communication, cannot be done without reference to the different styles, of thinking between the source language writers and the target language readers.The past century witnessed rapid progress in researches on translation, and a number of original translation theories emerged. Among them is Teleology, which, though some of its views are still in dispute, is thought by many to have provided a better resolution to issues such as methods of translation.Legal translation has been more and more emphasized since China began to reform and open up to the outside world. Language used in legal documents is characterized by its preciseness, formalness and impersonality due to its special function to specify rights and obligations.Chapter One of this thesis discusses the relationship between thinking, language and translation, and then makes a comparative study of the thinking styles of the Chinese and English as well as their influences on languages in four aspects: figurative thinking vs. abstract thinking,comprehensive thinking vs. analytical thinking, subject-centered thinking vs. object-centered thinking as well as straight thinking vs. converse thinking.Chapter Two makes a brief introduction to some translation theories, Teleology in particular, and then dwells on some stylistic features of legal documents and principles for legal document translation.Chapter Three is devoted to some techniques often employed in C-E legal translation, such as adjusting the sentence structures, switching visual angles or changing rhetoric devices, making proper addition or omission, etc., which are essential to make the translated version sound in grammar, reasonable in logic and thus idiomatic in expression.Chapter Four concludes all the exploration in the thesis.