The Principle Of Fidelity In Translation Of The Chinese Legislative Language

The principle of fidelity has been directing the translation practice in both China and the western countries ever since a long time ago. Theorists and translators have also been keeping the studies of the principle of fidelity with the emergence of new translation theories and translation practice. It is noticed that with the opening policy of China after the 1970s, the translation practice of the Chinese legislative texts began to flourish. But until the present, few scholars have ever systematically explored the applicability of the principle of fidelity in translating the legislative Chinese into English. The author of this thesis thus tries to make a preliminary attempt.The debate on the principle of fidelity in general translation is firstly discussed to pave the path to the theoretical analysis of its applicability in legal translation. The approving ideas put forward fidelity as a relative concept. The relativity of fidelity determines the feasibility of this principle, helping to expand its scope of applicability. The disapproving ideas especially the modern translation theories provide new perspectives to examine fidelity, but the challenges of fidelity raised from these new angles have their inherent demerits. The author advocates the relativity of the principle of fidelity, and then reviews the studies of fidelity in the theories of legal translation in the western countries and China. Upon the results of the theoretical studies of the precedents, this thesis confirms the guiding role of the principle of fidelity in the translation of the Chinese legislations.Fidelity in the translation of the Chinese legislative language is mainly substantiated in faithfully transferring the meaning of the source texts. The legislative texts play the fundamental role in regulating the rights and obligations of the people; their meaning thus becomes the spotlight in their application to the daily life. Accordingly, the translation of legislative texts should firstly pay attention to the decoding of the meaning of them. As the meaning is actually carried by language, legal translators should have a deep understanding of the meaning of the words, the sentence structures and the textual organizations of the original texts when seeking fidelity in the process of translation. The detailed analysis of the examples at the three linguistic levels---word level, syntactic level and textual level in this thesis demonstrates that fidelity to the meaning of the source texts can be fulfilled in translating the Chinese legislative language.Besides, the applicability of the principle of fidelity in guiding the translation of legal culture revealed in the legislative language is also discussed. Legal culture covers almost all the things and ideas with relation to law, such as legal systems and legal awareness. And legal translation, to some extent, is a kind of cultural exchange between alienable legal systems. The similarities and differences between Chinese and western legal cultures have much impact on the translation of the Chinese legislative texts. The legal translators are required to have competence in the legal cultures of China and English-speaking countries so as to faithfully transmit the legal messages. With the specific examples of translation of legislative Chinese under the circumstances of cultural similarity, cultural vacancy and cultural discrepancy, the author concludes that the principle of fidelity also provides guidance for the translation of legal culture.In short, this thesis holds that the principle of fidelity is applicable in guiding the translation of the Chinese legislative language. In this process fidelity is mainly the accurate transference of the meaning and culture of the original texts, which is inseparable from the translators'strong bilingual competence and profound knowledge of Chinese and western legal cultures.