On The Translation Of Legal Texts In Light Of Skopostheorie

As a crucial tool in standardizing social behavior and maintaining social order, law is an important representative of the degree of economic development and spiritual civilization of people. Law is closely connected to every aspect of social activities in current society, in which economy and civilization has highly developed. Legal systems vary among countries or regions due to the diversities in political system and cultural background. In order to deal with problems with legal importance attached when conducting international affaires or to cater the needs of research of different legal systems, there is an immense quantity of need of legal translation. Legal translation has long been in existing, and the importance of which is increasing in our global integrating economy and frequently exchanging politics.With the further deepening of China's opening to the outside and the increasing political and economic exchanges with other countries, there is a huge demand of legal translations in China, but studies on legal translation is insufficient relatively. Previous studies on legal translation are mostly from following perspectives: text genre, linguistic difference among languages, cultural differences, etc., and most of which adopt micro-level study method without emphasizing the functional importance of legal texts and the Skopos of the legal translation activities.The Skopos of the legal translation may include following conditions: translating foreign laws and regulations as reference in legislation process; translating documentary texts of cases for court trial; translating domestic legislative texts for corrections from foreigners; and translating legislative texts of different countries for scholars'comparative studies. Different Skopos of the legal translation determines different translation rules or strategies to be applied correspondingly. And it is the translation concept that the Skopostheorie proposes.This thesis resorts to functional translation theory. In accordance with the specific purpose of each circumstance, translators should adopt the proper rule from the three sub-rules of Skopostheorie in instructing their legal translation activities. Examples quoted in the thesis are selected from plenty of theoretical works on legal translation study and practical translated legal texts. By adopting the three sub-rules of Skopostheorie, the author appreciates and gives critical analysis to the translation examples, and then proposes amendments to some improper translation versions. The sub-rules: the Skopos rule, the Fidelity Rule and the Coherence Rule, have great impact in instructing legal translation activities both theoretically and practically.