A Study On The Development Environment Of Legal Translation In Neoteric And Contemporary China

The period of neoteric and contemporary China, specifically,from late Qing Dynasty to today, was a tremendously variable history with its own distinctive characteristics in every phase of its development and evolution. In this very special period, every field of civilization, including arts,literature,science,etc,has been changing ever since and unfolded themselves with different specialties and characteristics. Consequently, this period of history provides itself to be studied as a precious material for its own specialties. Likewise, the field of legal translation experienced a profound transformation from top to bottom.There are five stages in neoteric and contemporary China, namely, the period around the Opium War; the period of Westernization movement; the period of Reform of legal system; the period from the establishment of the PRC to Culture Revolution; and today. In each period, legal translation activities showed their distinctive characteristics. In the first period, legal translation activities in China were mostly fulfilled by the western missionaries, and there were merely local legal translation activities. In the second period, legal translation carried out by Chinese started to come into being. In the third period, legal translation began to boom and contributed in the achievement of Reforming of legal system. In the fourth period, legal translation activities were mostly Russian oriented. And the legal translation theory research was affected by ideology. And nowadays'legal translation is prosperous. Under the diversities of characteristics, there are several factors that have restricted and affected the development of legal translation, such as the political and economic interference, civilization, linguistics, construction of legal system, academic journals and periodicals of legal translation and international intercourses. These factors together formed an integrated development environment of legal translation and decided the development process of legal translation.This essay focuses on the variation of the characteristics of each phases of legal translation based on history records with the purpose of studying the development environment, such as, social environment, academic atmosphere, representative scholars, and how these environment factors affected the development of legal translation. Hopefully the principles and regulations of the development of legal translation could be found in order to give some useful suggestions to today's legal translation activities.