Legal Translation

Legal language has a long history in China as well as in the West, and legal translation has existed from the ancient time to the present. In an era of globalization, communication between different nations and countries is becoming more and more frequent, and accordingly, legal translation is becoming more and more important in this process. However, compared with the immense quantity of legal translations produced daily, the literature on legal translation is meager indeed.Traditionally, both at home and abroad, the micro-level linguistically bottom-up approach is adopted in legal translation studies, in which legal translation is only regarded as a process of linguistic transcoding. This approach emphasizes the "equivalence" between the source-text and the target-text. However, this criterion of "equivalence" is actually an ideal in translation practice, which is nearly impossible for translators to achieve.The author of this thesis holds that legal translation studies should be conducted in a macro-to-micro way, that is, a top-down way which is consistent with Functionalist Translation Theory. With an overall analysis of legal translational action and the agents involved in it, the macro-level translation Skopos and textual function are integrated with the micro-level language disposal.In the whole legal translational action, the translator is actually in a decision-making process, from the pragmatic level to the lexical level, in other words, from ascertaining the translation Skopos to language disposal in translation practice. At the macro-level, the Skopostheorie and loyalty principle impenetrate the process of .the legal translational action, while at the micro-level, the grammatical conventions of the source-text and the target-text should also be taken into account. Through the analysis of a number of examples, the author proves the applicability of loyalty principle, Skopos rule, intratextual rule and fidelity rule of functionalism in legal translation.Functionalist Translation Theory gives the translator much more freedom and scope of creativity, and the translator is no longer the passive transmitter between the source-text and the target-text. In the process of the translational action, the translator...