A Corpus-based Analysis Of Translation Shift In English-Chinese Translation Of Judicial Texts

Translation shift is a common phenomenon in translation of various genres, among which translation of English judicial texts is, of course, no exception. However, there has been very little analysis concerning translation shift in the field of the translation of judicial texts. Thus, the present study attempts to make a descriptive analysis of the translation shift in the translation of judicial texts from English to Chinese. Though, translation shifts include shifts at micro level and shifts at macro level, only shifts at micro level are taken into consideration in the present study.In the present study the author combines translation shift and legal discourse information together and presupposes that translation shifts might cause the change of information knot and further affect the information flow of the whole text. This thesis aims to identify the types of translation shifts occurring in the translation of English judicial texts, attempts to find out what types of translation shifts may cause the change of information knot and further influences the information flow of the whole text, and then proposes some translation strategies based on the above analysis.The data in this thesis are judicial texts drawn from the legal discourse corpus, including complaint, judgment, answer, legal opinion, letter of attorney and release. All these texts are analyzed comprehensively to reveal the influence of translation shift on information flow, which may shed some light on legal translation in China.After the analysis, the author finds there are six types of translation shifts occurring in the English-Chinese translation of judicial texts and some types of translation shifts affect of the information knot and information flow more frequently than others. In addition, the information flow of the whole text does not change so much as expected with regard to the large amount of translation shifts occurred.