C-E Translation Of Legal Text From The Communicative Perspective

With the deepening of reform and opening up and economic development, in particular with China's accession to WTO, C-E translation of legal texts has played an increasingly important role in the promotion of foreign trade, foreign exchange as well as international legal communication.Traditionally, translation is largely regarded as a process of transcoding a message from one language to another, whereby the primary goal is to preserve the meaning of the SL. Accordingly legal translators have been bound by the principle of fidelity to the original text. Under the guideline, translator is denied the power of decision-making and his or her central task is to duplicate the meaning of the original. According to Susan (?)ar(?)evi(?), however, the main emphasis in legal translation theory has shifted from interlingual transference to an act of communication in the mechanism of the law (1997, p. 55). Legal translators, being given power of decision-making, play an active role in communication including various aspects. This idea has liberated the translator, transforming him/her into a text producer whose task is to create a new text by selecting a translation strategy based on an analysis of the particular communicative situation ((?)ar(?)evi(?), 1997, p. 18). While translators cannot produce parallel textsâ‘ which are equal in meaning, they can produce a text that will lead to the same legal effects in practice.With the increasing communication between China and the world, this thesis, based on (?)ar(?)evi(?)'s communicative approach, aims at exploring the re-identification of function, receivers and status of the translation of Chinese legal texts in terms of the changing communicative situation. Based on the analysis of the status quo of the translation of Chinese legal texts, the author attempts to point out the existing difficulties and problems in the new communicative situation and put forward the general principles for the C-E legal translation to overcome the difficulties and tackle the problems. These principles consist of targeting equal legal effects, considering the status quo of target legal system, focusing on the reception of target receivers, obeying the expressive rules of legal English and being creative in translation strategiesThis thesis takes the translation of normative legal text (or legislative text) as the object of the study. Therefore, the translation of Contract Law of the PRC is used as a subject of a case study and it will be examined by the means of textual analyis as well as contrastive study. A close examination to the current translations of Contract Law of the PRC will be conducted to show some typical conceptual, lexical, textual and stylistic problems under the guidance of the traditional principle for C-E translation which cannot adapt to the new communicative situation. Finally, based on the analyses of the suggested principles for C-E translation, some specific translation strategies are proposed. The efficiency of these principles and strategies are examined through the improvement of translation of Contract Law of the PRC.In this thesis, some of translations in this thesis are selected from the translation version by Foreign Language Press (1999, hereafter called FLP), by China Legal System Publishing House (1999, hereafter called CLSPH), by Fu Weiliang (2002), or by Sun Wanbiao (2004) respectively. Some are dealt with by the author of the thesis. Furthermore, the United Nations Convention on Contract for the International Sale of Goods in 1980 (hereafter called CISG) is frequently compared with the Contract Law of the PRC for their close and inherent ties.