Chinese-English Legal Translation: A Functionalist Perspective

The present thesis explores the guidance of functionalist translation theory in Chinese-English translation of legal texts by means of a case study of Provisions for Drug Registration (SFDA Order 28).First of all, the author surveys the history of legal translation and provides a brief overview of legal translation studies in China and in western countries. On that basis, the author finds that the history of legal translation studies is rather short compared with that of legal translation. Further it is also noticed that legal translation studies in modern China mainly focused on language level.Next, the author presents a literature review of functionalist translation theories and concludes rules applicable to Chinese-English translation of legal texts, i.e., the Skopos rule, coherence rule, fidelity rule and loyalty principle.Then, the author explores the lexical and syntactic features of English legal texts and analyzes the linguistic features of Chinese version of Provisions for Drug Registration (SFDA Order 28) to make preparation for identifying and addressing major problems in Chinese-English legal translation.After that, the author adopts a top-down approach in case study to explore the guidance of functionalism in addressing major problems at linguistic level in Chinese-English legal translation. The author formulates the translation brief and the Skopos in Chinese-English translation of Provisions for Drug Regulation (SFDA Order 28), and addresses translation problems at linguistic level with the guidance of Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule.Finally, it is concluded that functionalist translation theory can effectively guide the Chinese-English legal translation and improve the quality of target texts. Meanwhile, limitations of the present study are presented as well as suggestions for the future research.