A Pragmatic Approach To The Translation Quality Assessment Of Legal Rules

The goal of legal translation, first and foremost, is the realization of equivalent legal effect in the target legal text. In other words, the translation should preserve the legal intent of the source text so as to guarantee that both the translation and the source text share the same interpretation and application in legal practice. Another criterion, which is no less prominent, is the realization of equivalent propositional content, i.e., equivalent meaning.The present study, in light of previous studies on legal translation and on the basis of the two criteria stated above, carries out the assessment work from the micro perspective, that is, to assess the translation quality of single legal rules from the pragmatic perspective. That is, it makes a detailed analysis of the pragmatic aspects of the translations of Chinese legislative texts by referencing the assessment model proposed in the present study. The analysis reveals that the that the criterion of equivalent legal effect has not yet aroused enough attention among legal translators and the most difficult task for the translators is to achieve the equivalent illocutionary force of legal speech acts and to identify the legislative intent. The translations of legislative texts still desire plenty of room for improvement.The present study has made some contributions to the translation quality assessment of legal rules and proved that equivalence in legal effect and propositional content are acceptable criteria for assessing the translation of legislative texts. Though the model is specifically designed to evaluate the translation quality of legislative provisions, it may hopefully shed some light on similar studies of translation quality assessment of different legal texts.